


72 Hours

by BeaArthurPendragon



Series: The Devil's Afterlife [6]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Adult Peter Parker, Bisexual Matt Murdock, Blanket Permission, Gay Peter Parker, Legal Drama, M/M, Plot, SHIELD, Sickfic, Whump, spiderdevil, spideydevil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 10:38:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 37,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17744348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeaArthurPendragon/pseuds/BeaArthurPendragon
Summary: Matt's new judo coach, Araceli Machado, is given heightened senses against her will--in violation of the Sokovia Accords. Meanwhile, Elektra Natchios is back in town, and that can't be a coincidence. Matt and Peter have 72 hours to find out what she's up to before Araceli has to turn herself in to SHIELD--or go on the run.You don't have to read the previous stories in this series to understand this one--they just enrich the experience if you do.





	1. Stick

**Author's Note:**

> For [Pogopop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pogopop/pseuds/pogopop), who followed the breadcrumbs. 
> 
> I never beta stuff, so, y'know, holler if you see anything.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt and Peter's night goes to hell.

_Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap_

“Oh my God, Matt, I am going to divorce you if you don’t stop,” Peter said, looking up from a set of proofs from his most recent photo shoot.

Matt always hesitated before he smiled, as if he had to test his joy to make sure it was real, but smile he did. More importantly, he stopped idly tapping his wedding ring against his coffee cup as he mulled over a deposition for his latest case. “Still feels weird,” he said, holding his hand up as if he could see it, waggling his ring finger. “I’m not used to the weight.”

“Please tell me that’s not a metaphor for our relationship,” Peter said, and Matt laughed, and it was the best sound in the world.

“Nope. Just an observation about the hardware,” he said. “You would understand if you wore yours.”

Matt was teasing now, but it was a marginally sore spot in their nine-week-old marriage. Once they returned home from their honeymoon, Peter had replaced his ring with a black silicone band that he could safely wear under his suit, relegating the real ring to a titanium dogtag chain with a breakaway clasp that Peter could quickly take off if he needed to get out of his civvies in a hurry.

By way of apology, Peter went over to Matt’s desk and began to dig his strong fingers into Matt’s permanently knotted shoulders.

They’d married quickly and simply two and a half months ago on a crisp October afternoon in the private garden on the roof of Stark Tower. Despite Tony’s offer to spare no expense for his favorite kid-who-wasn’t-a-kid-anymore, they’d kept it small—barely 30 guests, only those who knew about both their identities, because the entire point of a wedding was to give their whole selves to each other, wasn’t it?

Also there but not there: The four fallen Defenders whose remains had been secretly interred in a highly secure vault at the Avengers compound, safe from black marketeers hunting for mutant DNA. It had been almost a year and a half since the anti-mutant terrorist Hominus had exposed Matt to the epigenetic gas that permanently destroyed his powers and killed Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Danny Rand, and Trish Walker, and the losses—and Matt’s survivor’s guilt—still ached like badly knit bones.

Even so, it had been a joyous day, and even if the silicone band wasn’t as heavy as the platinum one hanging around his neck, or its twin on Matt’s hand, the sight of it made him smile. Especially when said hand was touching his husband’s skin.

“If it makes you feel better, I’m getting a perma-blister on my chest from where the strap of my camera bag rubs against the chain,” he said, leaning over and kissed Matt’s cheek, the aforementioned ring swinging free of Peter’s t-shirt and tapping Matt on the back of the head as he did so.

“Serves you right,” Matt said, snaking his hand around Peter’s waist and smacking his bottom. Peter smiled against Matt’s cheek and nibbled Matt’s ear, but Matt turned his head away with a sigh.

“Claire’s picking me up in a few minutes,” he said regretfully. He and Claire trained at Colleen Wing’s dojo on Tuesday and Thursday nights—Claire in aikido with Colleen, and Matt in judo with Paralympic gold medalist Araceli Machado.

“But I’ll be out by the time you get back,” Peter pouted. “Reschedule.”

“Sorry, lover,” Matt said, giving Peter’s ass a squeeze before gently disentangling himself from his husband and getting up to gather his gear.

Peter sat on the edge of Matt’s desk and watched him move around the apartment—first to the bedroom, to pull on a sweatshirt for the commute and select and pack a clean gi and belt into his gym duffel, then across to the kitchen to fill his water bottle and grab an energy bar from the pantry, and then finally to the entry table to collect his wallet, keys, and glasses.

He watched Matt all the time now, trying to understand how Matt worked, what his process was, what normal looked like without enhanced senses to guide him. A year and a half later, Peter was still teaching himself to recognize the man he loved in the body he lived in now.

Without powers to navigate with, Matt’s steps were little shorter and less sure than they had been, and there was a little shuffle in them, feeling out the floor before he put his full weight down, making sure he didn’t step on or trip over anything. New, too, was the tension in his bearing, as if he was constantly trying to check his momentum in case some obstacle caught him unawares. Which they often did—even now, he routinely bumped into furniture at home, rounded corners too tightly, tripped over thresholds and rugs. But it was his hands that had changed the most. They were much more mobile now, scanning his surroundings with his fingertips, lightly checking in on nearby walls and furniture as he moved around the apartment, searching for rather than reaching for his mug, his phone, his toothbrush.

He had seen Matt do most of this before, of course, before Matt revealed his secret to him and later, whenever they were out in public, but it had all been an act—and the difference between acting and not was occasionally a stark one. It had never bothered Peter before, but now he hated it, hated that it was necessary, hated the frustrated half-wince that always crept across Matt’s face when some object seemed to elude him, hated the pissed-off pause that always prefaced a reluctant request for help. Hated knowing that Matt wasn’t quite used to his new life, yet, either.

He had, at least, grudgingly accepted some necessary concessions to his independence around the house—keeping the apartment rigorously organized, Braille labels on all the food and medicine and appliances, a little device that beeped when he’d filled his coffee cup so he wouldn’t burn his finger—but he was proud and stubborn and much, much too Catholic to ask for anything that simply made his life a little easier.

Peter hadn’t figured out what that thing was, yet, but he was never going to stop looking for it.

He kept his grief over Matt’s losses to himself. Matt didn’t need his pity, and anyway, Peter knew how much it cost Matt to hear about it. He’d never forgotten the broken-voiced lie Matt had told him that morning when Claire delivered the bad news and it was Peter, not Matt, who had collapsed, and Matt, not Peter, promising his beloved that he would be okay. Peter had known Matt didn’t believe a word he was saying at the time, but he let Matt say it anyway, like a kid who thought a boo-boo could be healed by a kiss.

It didn’t matter that the lie was finally starting to turn into a truth, that okay was finally coming within reach—the grief was still there, always, a pebble in his shoe, an eyelash in his eye, and sometimes, not as often anymore, but sometimes still, an angry fist around his heart squeezing so tight he could hardly breathe. It was so fucking unfair. He would never, ever get over how unfair it was. But sometimes—sometimes—it felt okay anyway. Was that what acceptance meant?

The front door buzzer rang. “That’s my ride,” Matt said.

Peter followed Matt to the hall rack where he was pulling on his coat, and handed him his cane. It was the most precious thing in the apartment now, no longer a prop but Matt’s lifeline to the outside world—especially since Matt still categorically rejected the idea of getting a dog. He said he didn’t want to have to depend on anyone, including canines. Peter had abandoned the argument a long time ago. Too stubborn. Too Catholic. Matt wanted to do everything himself, even if it was harder.

But worry was Peter’s love language, and there was no end to the ways he could show it. “The sidewalks are starting to ice up,” he said, patting Matt’s chest. “You guys should take the bus.”

“Stop hovering,” Matt said, kindly but sternly. He located Peter’s chin with a light touch and kissed him twice. “Be careful out there, yourself. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

Peter texted Claire to let her know Matt was on his way downstairs and leaned in the doorway to watch Matt make his way to the elevator, search for the button, tilt his head to listen to the rattle of the cage as it creaked up to the top floor. Already Matt’s shoulders were hitching back up again, steeling himself to negotiate the onslaught of sounds, smells, and obstacles that were a fact of life in New York City. The world still scared him a little. But he went out into it anyway.  

Matt turned back towards the apartment with half a smile. “You going to leave the door open all night?”

Busted, Peter smiled. “Tell the girls I said hi,” he said, but he didn’t shut the door until the elevator arrived.

Hominus’ head had exploded less than a foot from Peter’s face, the .45 caliber bullet he’d shot himself with leaving little but a spatter of liquefied meat and shattered bone across Peter’s suit and cowl. The rest of Hominus’ body had taken a few seconds longer to die—his back had gone rigid in Peter’s arms, arms twitching, legs bicycling instinctively as if they could outrun suicide, but eventually his limbs stilled and his torso went limp and urine had poured down his leg and his heart, his broken, twisted, evil heart, finally stilled for good.

And Peter Parker, who had never taken a life, who’d had every intention to take Hominus alive, was glad.

* * *

MATT

Colleen’s dojo was upstairs from a Chinese grocery store near Mulberry and Canal. Though Danny had left her a fortune, she had no desire to move to a larger, newer facility. The simplicity of the space kept her humble, she said—instead, she’d founded five more dojos in low-income neighborhoods across Manhattan in Danny’s name, where free and sliding-scale classes were offered to all ages.

Matt was selfishly glad she’d kept the space. Not long after he’d returned from Midland Circle, he’d taught Jessica how to fight here—really fight, not just brawl—and it was then that they’d really started to become friends. Every time he came here now, the smell of the wooden weapons and the mats and the sweat and the subtler scents of produce and fish and butchered meat seeping up from downstairs reminded him of those lessons, and the friend he still found himself missing almost every day.

Now he was back as a student. It had been hard to start something new while he was still struggling to relearn almost everything he knew how to do before, but he would be the first to admit that studying judo was probably what had made reclaiming the rest possible. The discipline of it was deeply calming—not just the simple discipline of training, but the harder discipline of restricting himself to a single fight vocabulary, even when the devil inside him wanted to punch or kick. It had taken months before he had trained himself to save the illegal strikes for his workouts on the heavy bag at home, but the instinct to hit was still there and he guessed it always would be.

Learning how to control it had helped him develop a patience with himself he’d never had before, and that patience had bought him the time he needed to work through all the rest.

He made his way over toward the sparring mats that lined the street-facing wall.

“Marco,” he called out softly.

“Polo,” Araceli laughed—it was a dumb joke, but she always laughed, because how else were two blind people going to find each other in a big room? “We’re on mat four today.”

“You sound tired,” Matt said, counting off the mats as his cane found them. He knew he was close when he heard Cyrus, Araceli’s guide dog, scramble off to settle safely beyond the bench. One accidental whack of the cane a year ago was all it had taken for the German Shepherd to learn to stay the hell out of his way.

“I’m in college. I’m always tired,” Araceli said. “You’re not going to get off easy today, Murdock.”

Matt followed her voice and located her position on the mat. “Sensei,” he said, bowing before he stepped onto the mat. “Judoka,” she replied, which told Matt she had bowed, too. It wasn’t traditional but Araceli insisted they maintain some kind of etiquette, even though neither one of them could see it. Because they were blind, people expected them to be sloppy, she said, and she wasn’t about to give them the satisfaction of being right.

They met in the middle of the mat and began to warm up. Araceli _was_ tired, he could tell. She was slower than usual, and she was already breathing hard.

“You sound like hell,” Matt said. “You coming down with something?”

“I won my medal with a sprained foot, old man,” she said. “I can train with a cold.”

“Suit yourself.”

But as they began to spar, it was clear she was feeling awful. She was clumsy and clammy and much too easy to pin. Only recently had Matt gotten good enough to best her occasionally with skill rather than physics—he had four inches and fifty pounds on her—but it took neither to do that today. Still, she refused to stop.

Matt was debating whether or not to call it a night for her own good when he hooked his foot around her calf and landed her flat on her back with almost no effort at all. She hadn’t hit hard, but she’d yelped in a way that told him instantly she’d been hurt.

He dropped to the mat next to her. “What’s wrong?”

“My calf is killing me,” she said.

“Right or left?”

“Left.”

Matt quickly frisked the hurt leg to locate the injury but could find nothing unusual. Then, as he was checking her Achilles tendon, he found a small bump that made her yelp again as soon as he touched it.

“What is that?” he asked, touching it more gently this time.

“I think I got a bug bite this morning,” she said.

“In December?”

“I live in an old dorm. It could be bedbugs.”

“This is way too big for a bedbug bite,” Matt said. He called Claire over. “Can you look at this?”

She and Colleen came sprinting over.

“What happened?” Claire asked, dropping next to Matt.

“I’m fine,” Araceli said, trying to sit up. “Really.” But her voice was reedy and her words a little slurred.

“No, you’re not,” Matt said. “She said she felt like she had a cold, and I found this bump on her calf.” He scooted aside so Claire could see. “Be careful, it hurts.”

“That’s a puncture wound,” Claire said. “How’d you get that?”

“I don’t know,” Araceli mumbled.

“She’s white as a sheet,” Colleen said, placing her fingers on Araceli’s neck. “Her pulse is slow.”

“Hospital,” Matt said.

“Yeah.”

* * *

PETER

This was one of those winter nights in Manhattan that you never see in movies: Raw and wet, the susurrus of the season’s first sleet rattling against pavement and glass blunting the city’s racket like a white noise machine.

Peter ticked the heat up inside his suit another notch and engaged the micro-cleats beneath his boots. It was hard enough making the city feel safe without the Defenders as it was—the last thing he needed was anyone seeing Spider-Man wipe out on an unsalted patch of black ice.

Peter was grateful to have Manhattan tonight—he preferred staying close to Matt when he could, and on a night as shitty as this, he appreciated a short commute home. Frank could cover a lot of territory in his van, so he had both Brooklyn and Queens, while Misty was keeping her antenna up for trouble in the Bronx. Wade had drawn the short straw and was stuck in Staten Island until the first morning ferry.

If there was an upside to the weather, it was that it kept a lot of bad guys home. Peter used the downtime to chase down some hunches and leads—a mob poker game in the back room of a dry cleaner on West 57th (not tonight), a counterfeit ID operation in the basement of a five-story walkup in Alphabet City (the building had burned late last week), an international money launderer who allegedly kept a penthouse apartment on East 77th (nobody had been home for months). 

He kept moving to stay warm, zigzagging up into Harlem and then across to Washington Heights and Inwood, then back down past Columbia—always casting an eye on the corner apartment Matt and Foggy had shared at 110th and Amsterdam—before working his way down the Upper West Side toward home and a chance to nibble more than Matt’s ear. 

He wasn’t sure what made him scan the throng of ballet patrons leaving the theater after a night of Gisele. Perhaps he had unconsciously recognized her profile before his mind could piece together her identity.

He wasn’t naïve enough to think it was impossible that she was still alive—her body had never been found, after all—but whatever happened to her, she’d stayed well off the grid for the past fifteen years. He knew, because she was still on SHIELD’s Ten Most Wanted, and like all the other Avengers, he’d memorized her face, her voice, her gait long ago. Just in case.

He moved as close as he could, managing to get near enough to read the license plate of the town car she climbed into. He followed her south down Broadway, then, with a pit in his stomach, as it began to dogleg through Hell’s Kitchen toward 10th Avenue. But whether it was intentional or just a coincidence, he couldn’t be sure. The car didn’t slow down as it passed their apartment, though he knew full well that she knew exactly where it was, and moments later her true destination became clear as the vehicle disappeared into the Lincoln Tunnel, bound for New Jersey.

A chill Peter’s suit warmers couldn’t touch clutched at his heart. If she was here, trouble wasn’t far behind.

He didn’t know yet that it had already arrived.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: Araceli goes to the hospital and begins to exhibit some alarming symptoms.


	2. Everything is Loud

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Araceli begins to display alarming symptoms, and Matt recognizes the trouble she's about to be in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, I went to Wikipedia School of Medicine. Please ignore any medical inaccuracies. 
> 
> Also, my conception of the Sokovia Accords/Superhuman Registration Act is my own invention, but I'm told it's more similar to the comics version than the MCU version. I hope it all hangs together anyway.

MATT

Claire had met the paramedics at the door with a litany of medical Latin— _19-year-old female, puncture wound distal left calf, shocky, thready pulse, disoriented, reported feeling ill prior to event, she’s blind so her pupils might not tell you much._

After a brief argument, the paramedics allowed Colleen to accompany Araceli to the hospital, while Matt and Claire raced to gather their things and collect Cyrus so they could follow in the first cab they could find.

By the time they reached the emergency room, Araceli was doing worse. She had torn off her gi, complaining that she was burning up despite her dropping temperature, and her wrists had been restrained to keep her from doing the same to the hospital gown she now wore. Colleen was trying to soothe her, but she kept kicking and writhing and turning her head away. In her distress she’d slipped into her native Spanish, but both Claire and Matt understood her perfectly.

“She says everything is too loud,” Claire told the resident.

“Sensitivity to noise can be a sign of concussion,” he said.

“I’ve had a concussion,” she said. “It didn’t feel like this at all.”

“She’s got an infected puncture wound,” Claire said. “Read her fucking chart.”

“Oh, right,” he said. “Look, lady, it’s been a wild night with the weather. We’re stacked two deep in the hallways.”

“It’s doctor, not lady, and I noticed. You still have to read her fucking chart.”

“Is she on any medications?”

“I don’t think so,” Colleen said.

“Does she use drugs?”

“God, no. She’s an elite athlete.”

“Steroids? Meldonium? Any other performance enhancers?”

“She would never—”

“Look, lady, I’m not the Olympic Committee. I don’t care if she juices, I just have to know whether she did. Could be a bad batch of something, could just have been a dirty needle.”

“The wound is on her ankle,” Claire said, settling the argument. “Who the hell injects themselves there?”

“People who don’t want to mess up their arms. We’ll check for the usual suspects to be safe,” the resident said. “Can you tell her to hold still for a minute so I can place the IV? All the nurses are busy and I suck at this.”

“She speaks English, asshole,” Claire said. “Tell you what. You go to radiology and get some earplugs from the MRI lab, and I’ll do the IV.”

“I can’t just let you—”

“My name is Claire Temple. I’m an internist in private practice and I have admitting privileges at this hospital. Now hand me that cath and get her some damn earplugs.”

The resident huffed, but he complied. Araceli calmed a little after he was gone. “Okay, ‘Celi,” Claire murmured in Spanish. “This is Claire. You’re in the hospital. Do you remember riding in the ambulance with Colleen?”

“Si,” she said hoarsely. "Please help me.”

“I will, I promise,” Claire said softly. “I need to put an IV into your arm so we can give you some medicine, okay? I know it hurts right now but I need you to be very still for a moment so I can do this. Can you be strong for me?”

Araceli whimpered but seemed to settle. Matt stood uselessly in the corner of the room as Colleen continued to try to soothe Araceli as Claire busied herself with the business of placing the IV.

“Just listen to my voice, ‘Celi,” Colleen murmured. “Feel my hand. I’m right here. I’m not going to let anything happen to you, I promise. I’m right here with you. Focus on your breath now—can you do that for me? In for five, out for five. I’ll count, you breathe. One, two, three…”

Colleen had been training with Araceli for nearly three years. Danny had been dead for barely four months when Araceli had come home from high school one afternoon to discover that her parents had been deported, leaving their blind American-born teenager alone in this country with no other family to look after her. Colleen had brought her home that night, and she’d never left. Colleen could not imagine life without her.

It was only then that he noticed his phone buzzing with a missed call and was surprised to discover it was from Peter. It was barely 10 p.m.—Peter usually wouldn’t be home for at least another three hours. Perhaps the shitty weather had forced him to call it a night early.

“Hey, where are you?” Peter asked without preamble when Matt called him back. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for almost an hour.” He didn’t bother to hide the worry in his voice. Matt should have been home by then.

“Metro General,” Matt said. “We had to bring Araceli to the emergency room. What’s going on?”

“What happened to Araceli?”

“It’s weird, actually. She collapsed at the dojo and went into shock, and Claire found a puncture wound on her leg,” Matt said. “Looks like she’s got a bad infection.”

“Holy shit. Is she okay? Or, obviously not, but is she—”

“She’s hanging in there. They’re going to do some blood tests.” Matt turned away from the bed and leaned against the wall to create as much privacy as he could. “What’s going on with you? Why’d you call?”

“I got worried when you weren’t here,” Peter said. “We’ll talk when I get there.”

“No, don’t,” Matt said. “There’s already too many of us in here and there’s nothing you can do. I’ll keep you posted.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Why don’t you plan to come relieve us tomorrow? By then we’ll all need to get some sleep anyway.”

“Okay,” Peter said, clearly grateful to have something to do. “I love you.”

“You too.”

* * *

It was after midnight before Araceli was admitted. Her tox screen had come back negative for everything they could think to look for. Her white blood count was high, suggesting her immune system was fighting something—but they didn’t know what. Most likely it was a bad case of flu, the resident said, since she hadn’t gotten her shot yet and this year’s strain was particularly nasty. But, he said when Claire objected to that diagnosis, he didn’t want to wait for the cultures to come back—they would go ahead and get her on a high dose of antibiotics in case it was bacterial and because of her sensitivity to sound they’d do an MRI of her brain to rule out some form of encephalitis or meningitis. As for the puncture wound, he said, he didn’t think it was related. She’d probably just caught her ankle on something somewhere and irritated the wound with her sock and boot.

The earplugs seemed to help a little, but not much. She felt like she was being electrocuted, she said, and she said the hospital smells were so strong she thought she might puke.

“I can get you some Vick’s from the morgue to put under your nostrils if that would help,” Claire said.

“They keep Vick’s in the morgue?” Colleen asked.

“Sometimes you get bodies you’d rather not smell.”

“No, it’ll sting too much,” Araceli said. “My skin’s on fire. Why can’t they just knock me out?”

“Because they’re afraid it’ll slow your breathing down too much,” said Colleen gently. “I’m sorry, kiddo. We can ask for more pain meds, though, right, Claire?”

“You’re maxed out on opioids but we could try gabapentin to calm your nerves down,” Claire said. “Want to try that?”

“Yes,” Araceli whispered. “Anything.”

At the mention of a nerve block, Matt began to grow cold. “Is everything too loud, or is it just too much?” he asked. “Is it painful to hear or can you just hear a lot more than you could hear before?”

“More,” she said hoarsely. “Everything all at once.”

_No._

“Could I have the room, please?” Matt asked.

“Why?” Colleen asked. “What’s happening?”

“I just want to—please just trust me,” he said. “Just for a few minutes.”

When the room was empty, Matt turned back to Araceli. “I’m going to ask you some very strange questions now, and I need you to be completely honest, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Take out the earplugs.”

“Do I have to?”

“Yes, I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” she said. And then a moment later: “They’re out.”

“I want you to pay attention to me. Try to shut everything else out and focus on me, okay? Can you hear me breathing?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, good,” Matt said. “I’m going to hold my breath, but keep listening to me and tell me what you hear, okay? I want you to try to focus just on me.”

“Okay,” she said skeptically.

After a minute, he exhaled. “What did you hear?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“Yes, you did,” Matt said gently. “It’s okay. You can tell me.”

“I heard your stomach growl,” she said.

“It did,” Matt said. “What else?”

“My heartbeat was really loud,” she said tentatively. “I could hear it…echo?”

“Was it an echo?” Matt asked. “Here, let’s do it again.”

The minute wasn’t even over before Araceli whimpered. “How can I do that?”

 _No no no no no._ Matt crossed himself and took her hand in both of his.

“Matt?” Araceli asked, terror ringing through her voice like a cathedral bell. “What’s happening to me?”

“It’s okay, Celi,” he said. “I promise you’ll be okay. Do you trust me?”

“Yeah.”

“Go ahead and put your earplugs back in, kiddo. I’m going to get up to talk to Claire for a few minutes, okay? I’m not leaving,” he said, releasing her hand to stand. He felt his way to the door and pulled it open a few inches.

“I need to talk to Claire,” he said.

“Matt?” Colleen said.

“Just Claire,” Matt said.

He shut behind the door behind Claire after she entered and whispered as quietly as he thought she could still hear. “Bathroom.”

“Matt—”

“Please.”

Once inside the bathroom Matt turned on the vent fan and the shower.

“Matt, this is weird,” Claire said flatly.

“I don’t want her to hear this.”

“She has earplugs in. She can’t possibly hear us.”

Matt ignored her. “You can’t let them do that MRI on her.”

“Is that so, Dr. Murdock?”

“Claire, listen to me carefully. If they do that MRI, it will look like mine. We cannot let them see that.”

“Holy shit,” Claire breathed. “No.”

“What she’s describing is _exactly_ what I felt after I was burned. Exactly,” Matt said. “She can hear my heartbeat.”

Claire’s sharp intake of breath and muttered “fuck” told him that she knew as well as he did that if Araceli was undergoing an unauthorized mutagenic change, she was about to find herself on the wrong side of the Sokovia Accords’ supersoldier ban through no fault of her own. “We’ll do it at my clinic so I can read it myself.”

The only problem was that Claire’s clinic was smack dab in the middle of Stark Tower. “Does Stark know who comes and goes? Does SHIELD?”

“Patient records are sealed for human and mutant patients alike. Literally the only people who will know she’s there are us and the ambulance driver, and I’ll use one of ours to be safe,” Claire said. “Metro General won’t even think twice about the transfer—they’re bursting at the seams tonight.”

Matt shut off the shower and they went back into the room.

“Araceli, I run a special clinic for unusual medical conditions,” Claire said. “I think I can help you there better than I can help you here. Will you consent to a transfer? It won’t cost you anything.”

“I guess, yeah,” she said. “What do I have?”

“Well, I’m not sure yet,” Claire said. “But we’re funded by the Stark Organization, which means I have access to more resources than this hospital does. We might be able to get some answers for you more quickly if we’re over there.”

“Okay,” Araceli said. “We Dominicanas need to stick together anyway, right?”

“You know it,” Claire said, squeezing her leg. “I’ll go get the papers ready. Want me to send the Colleen back in now?”

“Not yet,” Matt said. “Thank you.”

After Claire closed the door again, he said, “Araceli, I want you to hire me to be your lawyer. My fee is one penny.”

“Why do I need a lawyer?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

“If someone poisoned you, you should have a lawyer,” Matt said. “Hiring me now means I can get to work on your case as quickly as possible.”

“Um, okay,” she said.

“Are you up for more questions right now?” Matt asked. “Everything we discuss is protected by attorney-client privilege, which means it’s totally secret. You can tell me anything, no matter how weird it seems—and believe me, I’ve heard a lot of weird things in my day. Nothing you say will scare me or make me think you’re crazy.”

“Okay,” Araceli said. “But I don’t know what I could tell you that could help. I don’t understand why anyone would want to poison me.”

“Is there anyone in your life you’re having trouble with? That new guy you’re seeing? Jake? What about anyone else you train with? A rival, maybe?”

“No,” Araceli said. “I’m not having any problems with anyone. I haven’t seen Jake since Sunday morning. During the school year I just train with Colleen and you.”

“It’s also possible you were targeted for no other reason than because you couldn’t identify your assailant.”

Araceli sighed. “I’ve always been afraid of that,” she said. “Someone could hurt me and just—get away with it, you know? That’s why my parents got me into judo in the first place.”

“I’m not going to let whoever did this get away with anything,” Matt said. “Did anyone bump into you this morning? You stop before crossing the street, right? Did that catch anyone behind you by surprise?”

“I mean, that happens, but not—” she paused. “Oh, last night, on my way home from the library. Somebody slipped on the ice right next to me. I stopped to see if he was okay.”

“Could you tell how old he was?” Matt asked. “Was he a student or--?”

“Um, not young. Not old. Maybe your age?”

“What else? Did he speak? Did he have an accent? Could you tell if he was tall or short? Heavy or thin?”

“I asked if he was okay and all he said was yes, but he sounded American. White, if I had to guess, but I’ve been wrong before. He only spoke when he was on the ground, so I couldn’t tell how tall he was, but the way he hit the pavement I don’t think he was big. But he never touched me.”

“Where was that?”

“Around 68th and Lex, I think.”

“And you went straight home after that?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Bus or train?”

“Bus,” she said. “At Third Avenue. I don’t take the subway by myself.”

“Was it crowded?”

“Not crowded,” she said. “It had to have been after nine by then. Nobody bumped into me there, either. People usually give Cyrus a wide berth. I guess he looks mean.”

“What were you wearing?” Matt asked. “I mean, what kind of fabric was on your legs at the time? How many layers? Were you wearing socks? Boots?”

“Just leggings and sneakers,” she said. “It wasn’t very cold that morning. I’d been in the library all day and forgot to check the weather before I left home.”

“Where are those clothes now?”

“Home. Laundry basket.”

“Do you have a roommate?”

“No.”

“And your dorm room is locked?”

“Duh,” Araceli said. “Matt, what is this spy shit?”

“It’s not spy shit,” Matt said, with a reassuring smile he hoped Araceli could hear in his voice. “These are the kinds of questions I have to ask to work your case.”

“Should we call the police?”

“Not just yet,” Matt said. “Let’s make sure you don’t just happen to have the world’s worst case of the flu first, okay?”

“You’ll tell them all this if I die?”

“Oh, kiddo,” Matt said, kissing her hand. “I’m not a doctor, but I think if this was going to kill you, it would have already. I think you’re just going to feel really lousy for a while.”

“I’m tired now,” Araceli said. “Can you stay with me till I fall asleep?”

“Of course,” Matt said.

He wasn’t sure how much time passed before she fell asleep, but eventually her breathing became slow and steady. He gently decoupled his hand from hers and found his way back to the hospital room door and opened it.

“Colleen?” he called softly.

“I’m right here,” she said, stepping toward him from across the hall. There was a bench there, he remembered. “How is she?”

“Sleeping, finally,” he said. “Can I ask you a huge favor?”

“Of course,” she said.

“Can you go to Araceli’s dorm room and collect her laundry and bring it to Claire’s? Wear gloves. If she was injected with something, there might be some evidence on her clothes.”

“Sure, of course,” she said. He didn’t like to ask her to do it—it was evidence tampering—but this was an errand he couldn’t do himself and did not want Peter involved with. Taking Araceli into the heart of Stark Tower was risky enough as it was—telling Peter why would only make this worse for everyone.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: Peter faces a dilemma, and Matt receives some painful news.


	3. Secret Weapon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt and Peter each learn what the other's discovered, leading to a terrible dilemma.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like my medical degree, my law degree comes from Wikipedia University. Lawyers, I'm so sorry for what I'm going to do to your fine profession.

“She said she was wearing leggings, so start there,” Colleen said.

Peter was sitting at a clear containment box, arms gloved past the elbow in the thick rubber gauntlets mounted with welded seals in the front so he could search through Araceli’s now-hazardous laundry. It was slow work, requiring him to stretch the fabric of each pair of leggings—all eleven pairs of them—across his thumbs and hold them against a lightbulb three square inches at a time in search of that needle hole.

Two hours earlier, Colleen had texted him to let him know that Araceli was being moved to Claire’s clinic and that Matt was going to stay with her tonight. He’d realized that if Araceli was coming to Claire’s, he couldn’t wait till morning to tell Matt about who he’d seen. The coincidence was too great.

But when he arrived, only Colleen was there. He found her pacing the lobby with trash bag full of clothes sitting on a bank of plastic chairs that lined the darkened reception area, lit only by a few emergency lights. She looked exhausted and miserable and she accepted his hug with sniffly sob.

“How is she?” he asked.

“Sick,” she said. “Really, really sick.”

“No leads at all?”

“Matt seems to think—” she started. “Well, I don’t know what Matt thinks. He wouldn’t tell me. He and Claire seem to have an idea, though.”

“Huh,” Peter said. “When are they supposed to get here?”

“As soon as they can get the ambulance. It’s a busy night.”

“Well,” Peter said, looking at the trash bag. “I guess we can make ourselves useful in the meantime.”

He was four pairs of leggings down when they heard Araceli’s gurney being pushed in through the ambulance bay door. Colleen went to join them, but Peter didn’t want to lose his place, so he stayed where he was and kept working.

Matt and Claire joined him a few minutes later.

“I told you not to come,” Matt said, clearly pissed off to find him there.

“Well, too bad, grumpypants,” Peter said mildly. “She all settled in?”

“Out like a light,” Claire said. “Colleen’s staying with her. Her vitals are fine—I think she’s out of danger now.”

“What are you doing?” Matt asked, cocking his head. In the deserted lab, the squeak and groan of the rubber gloves as he worked were perfectly noticeable.  

“Using the clean box to go through her clothes,” Peter said. “Thought I’d see if I could find that needle puncture.”

“Oh God, Peter, no,” Matt said, stepping forward quickly, his hands striking the box before finding Peter’s shoulder. “You haven’t found anything yet, have you?”

“Not yet, but half her wardrobe seems to be black leggings, so there are plenty more to check.”

“Good,” Matt said, tightening his hand on Peter’s shoulder. “Stop before it’s too late. The more you know, the less I can protect her.”

“Protect her from what?” Peter asked. “I’m not an idiot, Matt. You came to Claire’s for a reason, which can only mean that you think we’re in zombie ninja territory. And I,” he said, pausing to work a tiny dart no thicker than an acupuncture needle out of a fold of crumpled fabric—"just found the smoking gun.”

Claire leaned over his shoulder to look. “Shit.”

“Just bag whatever it is and go home, Peter,” Matt said. “Seriously.”

“I know what a remote microdoser looks like, Matt,” Peter said. “We use these to deliver knockout sedatives in the field sometimes.”

He dropped the dart into a small chamber where it was deposited into a thick clear plastic envelope and sealed shut before dropping into a tray below the isolation chamber. He fished it out and held it up to the light to look at it more closely, counting the fins and only finding three. He looked again in the insane hope that perhaps the fourth had just broken off.

It hadn’t.

Fuck.

“It’s not one of ours,” he said. “Matt, we’re way, way beyond the stage of plausible deniability here. Read me in so I can _help_ you.”

“Let me spare you the moral quandary, Matt,” Claire said. “It’s starting to look an awful lot like Araceli was exposed to the same agent that gave Matt his powers as a child.”

“Holy shit.”

“I wish you hadn’t done that, Claire,” Matt said angrily.

“And as an Avenger, I’m required to report unauthorized mutagenesis,” Peter said. “What you wanted to protect her from was me.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand why Peter can’t know. She didn’t violate the law—the person who did this to her did,” Claire said. “She’s a victim.”

“We’re all victims, Claire,” Matt said. “None of us asked for this life. I was nine. Jessica—” his voice stumbled over her name “—was 12. Peter was 15. Luke was incarcerated. Danny was brainwashed as a child. Wade thought he was treating his cancer. Xavier’s kids were born into it. Trish—was a rare exception. It didn’t stop the government from deciding that we all needed to live the rest of our lives on a federal watchlist.”

“Relitigating the Sokovia Accords doesn’t help us right now, babe,” Peter said gently. “You really asking me to forget I saw this and go home?”

“Yes.”

Peter paced the length of the lab and back. “No,” he finally said. “I can’t look the other way on this Matt, you know that.”

 Matt bit his lip and nodded. After years of avoiding it, he’d been forced to sign the Superhuman Registration Act before Peter could move in with him. It had been the cause of their first big fight and it was the only compromise that Matt had made for their relationship that he still resented. But SHIELD was clear: As with any other highly sensitive federal agent, under no circumstances could an Avenger’s private life be compromised. Everyone had to be vetted for illegal habits or relationships. Their finances had to be in order. And mutants needed to be registered. There was no way around it: The price of spending his life with Peter had been Matt’s signature.

It was a long moment before he spoke. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“I can’t let you leave,” Matt said.

Peter bit his lip to keep from pointing out what they all knew: Matt couldn’t stop him anymore. But he had to convince him of the futility of his fight. “ _My_ leaving isn’t the problem. We’re in the middle of Stark Tower, Matt. All I have to do is keep _her_ from leaving.”

“Colleen could get past you.” _Jessica certainly could have_. She was the only person besides Banner that he knew of who was stronger than Peter. God, he could have used her by his side right about now.

“No, she can’t,” Peter said, struggling to stay calm.

“I swear to God, I’m not going to let SHIELD get its hands on her, Peter,” Matt said. “She’s not a weapon, or a criminal, or a fucking specimen that needs to be tagged and tracked.”

“Matt, I already fought one war over this. I’m not doing it again. Especially not with you.”

“It’s unconstitutional, Peter,” Matt said. “One day we’ll have a Supreme Court that has the courage to take this up and when they do—”

“I know,” Peter said softly. He stepped forward and touched Matt’s arm. “Just give me some time to think, okay?”

“Come with me first,” Matt said. He took Peter’s arm but it was clear from the pressure of his grip and the way he pushed against the back of Peter’s elbow that he was the one leading the way.

He took Peter back upstairs to the main level and then down the south corridor to the reinforced inpatient suite at the end of the hall—the ‘Hulk suite,’ as Claire called it. It was larger than a regular hospital room, furnished with a sofa, a table, a video screen and a small window overlooking Central Park made from the same unbreakable polymer that glazed the observation window Matt led Peter toward.

 “A year ago you promised me you would make what happened to me mean something,” he said quietly. “This is what that looks like.”

The lights were off in the room, but there was enough light in the hallway behind them for him to clearly see Araceli, curled up with a pillow like a child on the hospital bed. She was so strong that he always forgot how petite she was. She’d just turned 22, but right now she could have passed for 12. Beyond, Colleen was stretched out on the sofa beneath a blanket, fast asleep.

Cyrus wasn’t. He was resting on a thick folded comforter at the foot of Araceli’s bed, but he’d immediately stirred when Matt raised the blinds, and now he raised his head and seemed to be looking directly at them. He tilted his head then stood up, ears slightly back, tail down, and fixed Peter with his eyes as if to say, _you’ll have to come through me first._

“She’s terrified,” Matt continued. “She has no idea what’s happening to her right now. She’s in an incredible amount of pain, she’s beginning to perceive her surroundings in a way she can’t begin to understand. You _know_ what that feels like.”

“I do.”

“She won a gold medal for this country and they deported her parents for overstaying their visa because they knew there were no opportunities for a blind girl back home. Do you think she’s got one iota of trust in the U.S. government anymore?”

“I know,” Peter said, taking Matt’s hand in his. “We’re on the same side, Matt. I want what’s best for her, too.”

“I’m not handing her over, Peter,” Matt said. “I’m not going to let them hurt her again. I’m telling you this as her friend and her lawyer. I know you don’t want to fight me on this, but believe me, I will fight you.”

“I know you will,” Peter said, closing the blinds. “Look, there’s something I need to show you, too. Will you come with me to Claire’s office?”

Matt nodded once, wordlessly, and took his arm.

The last time they’d been inside Claire’s office was they day they’d learned Matt’s powers had been permanently destroyed. It seemed like a fitting place to deliver this new blow to him.

God, he hated having to do this.

Peter guided Matt to a chair and then went around Claire’s desk to insert a memory stick containing the data chip from his suit’s onboard recording device into the computer. He selected the file he wanted and began to play it.

“It sounds like sleet and traffic,” Matt said flatly.

“It’s coming,” Peter said. “Tonight I spotted one of SHIELD’s most wanted near Lincoln Center. I managed to get close enough to capture a voice right….here.”

He queued up the segment showing her climbing into the town car. The audio was bad, but it was good enough.

“It was almost as good as the Mariinsky,” the woman said, responding to a garbled question from whoever was driving. Her British-inflected-pan-European accent was as plummy as ever. “Perhaps this city was worth saving, after all.”

Matt had gone pale the moment she spoke. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s impossible.”

He was leaning forward in his chair already; now he dipped his head and covered it with his hands.

“Talk to me, babe,” Peter said softly, uncertain whether Matt wanted to be touched or not right now.

Matt shook his head and cleared his throat, and from the new set of his shoulders as he sat back up, Peter could tell he had decided that his feelings about Elektra’s survival were a problem to be solved later. His client needed him now. “You don’t have a choice, do you.”

“No.”

Matt sighed and rubbed his chin. A tear welled in his right eye and he wiped it away. “Fuck.”

“Yeah, that about sums it up,” Peter said, chewing on his thumbnail. “Matt, can you consider the possibility that SHIELD could actually help her? You told me how awful those first few years were for you before Stick came along. SHIELD could get her into training right away. She wouldn’t have to go through what you did.”

“I should be the one to train her, Peter,” Matt said. “I’m the only one who understands what she’s experiencing right now.”

“There’s no reason you couldn’t come with us,” Peter said. “Or maybe SHIELD could release her into our custody—”

“ _Our custody_?” Matt scoffed. “She’s an adult who has committed no crime. Legally she should be free to walk out the door right now and never come back, no matter what she can do.”

“I’m trying to help, for fuck’s sake,” Peter growled.

“Really? Because it sounds like you want to bring her in,” Matt said.

“What I want has nothing to do with it!” Peter hit the windowsill so hard Matt jumped. “We play this wrong, we get charged with _treason_ , Matt. You know that. You _know_ that.”

Matt wiped his eyes again and shook his head. Then he nodded. If Elektra was the one who dosed Araceli, Araceli could legally be classified as a terrorist asset. She and anyone who helped her would be considered an enemy of the state.

“You can’t take her in until she’s awake and understands what’s going on. If she doesn’t want to go—if SHIELD takes her against her will—we are going to court.”

“I know.”

“And you have to protect her if I lose, Peter. You can’t let them force her to become a soldier if she doesn’t want to.”

“We don’t do that,” Peter said. “We would have to rule out any connection to Elektra and train her enough to make sure she’s not a threat to public safety, though.”

“Wrong answer. Mutant or not, she’s still innocent until proven otherwise.”

“You sound like you’re negotiating a surrender.”

“Because I fucking _am_ , Peter.” Matt had the same look now he had when he was preparing for a tough trial—exhausted, righteous, and determined. The devil had come out for this fight, and Peter knew he wasn’t going to back down.

Peter stood and walked to the window. Outside, dawn was just beginning to break over the city and traffic was already thick on the West Side Highway below. “I hate this.”

“Not as much as I do,” Matt said.

Peter laughed bitterly. “Hell of a first fight for our marriage.”

“Our life together was never going to be normal,” Matt said.

“Don’t start using the past tense already,” Peter said.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Matt said. “But this—this is a bad one.”

Peter began to pace back and forth along the back wall, chewing the nail of his left thumb.

“Can I ask your legal opinion about something?”

Matt laughed sourly. “Well, as Araceli’s lawyer that would be a blatant conflict of interest, so no.”

“Please.”

“I mean, you can ask. No guarantee I’ll answer.”

“How long do I have to report this?”

“You tell me. Don’t you have protocols?”

“Protocols aren’t laws, Matt. Let’s say losing my job is the least of my worries right now. When does the treason clock start?”

“Technically? Once you prove Elektra did this,” Matt said. “But for your own good, don’t take my word for it. You need to call Foggy.”

* * *

MATT

“I should have known, Matt,” Foggy said, his voice airy with disbelief. “I didn’t know how it could be possible that you could still get pulled into this shit, and yet here we are.”

“Hey, I didn’t go looking for it.”

“I know, buddy,” Foggy said, hugging him. “I just—Jesus, what a mess.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m not taking Peter’s case,” Foggy said. “I’m referring him to Marci. She’s in Claire’s office with him now.”

“Why?”

“Because Peter’s lawyer needs to do what’s best for _him_ , not what’s best for you,” Foggy said. “And I don’t compartmentalize so well with you, buddy. But we both know Marcie will. And she’s the only other non-government lawyer in the world who knows his identity, so it’s not like there are a lot of choices here.”

Foggy’s wife was the toughest broad Matt had ever met, and that was a club that included Jessica Jones, Jeri Hogarth, and Natasha Romanov. Her ruthlessness in the courtroom was legendary, and aside from her love for her daughter, Alice, she did not have a sentimental bone in her body. She would break Matt’s heart without a second thought in order to protect her client. Peter, he had to admit, could not be in better hands.

“I can live with that.”                                                    

“Besides, I can’t take his case if I’m taking yours.”

“Mine?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Foggy said calmly. “If SHIELD gets its hands on Araceli, it’s only a matter of time before their investigation leads to you. You dated Elektra in college. You accepted a suspiciously large retainer from her during the Castle trial. You inherited her fortune when she faked her death—”

“Wrong. I inherited the unenumerated contents of a safe-deposit box.”

“Which I know contained a million dollars in cash because I was the one who counted it for you.”

“Which I never reported.”

“Jesus, Matt,” Foggy sighed. “Nobody needs to give you a shovel when it comes to that woman because you’re content to dig your own grave with your hands.”

“I never deposited her check. There is no record of the cash ever existing.”

“You think SHIELD doesn’t have forensic accountants who can figure out how you spent it?”

“I never spent it,” Matt said.

“It’s still just sitting there in the bank?”

“I guess they could get me on tax fraud if they wanted to.”

“Tax fraud is the least of your worries. You fraternized with a terrorist. You accepted money from her. You operated in violation of the Superhuman Registration Act for more than a dozen years. You’re Araceli’s judo student--you had more opportunity to stab her with that needle than probably anyone else in her life. C’mon, buddy, do the math: You’ll be lucky to avoid conspiracy.”

“Conspiracy to do what, exactly? Fall for a honey trap in college?”

“We both know you have no intention of handing Araceli over to SHIELD.”

“Oh?”

“Columbia Law Review, volume 114 no. 3, pages 92-116: _Compulsory Disclosure and the Fifth Amendment: A Case Against the Superhuman Registration Act_ by Matthew M. Murdock,” Foggy said gently.

“That doesn’t mean I’m going to hand her over to Elektra, for Christ’s sake. My argument was that mutants deserve the same protection against self-incrimination as non-mutants.”

“You mean like not having to tell the government that you’re an illegal supersoldier working for a known terrorist?” Foggy said. “Look, I hate to say it, but it looks a hell of a lot like Elektra set you up, buddy.”

 _Fuck_.

“Fine. If you’re my attorney, then this entire conversation is privileged,” Matt said, digging a dollar out of his wallet and handing it to Foggy. “I never told Peter about the money. He knows about the relationship but not the money—and neither does SHIELD. You breathe a word of your suspicions to him and I will never forgive you. The less he knows, the better.”

“He needs to know that turning her in means condemning you, Matt.”

“And not turning her in means condemning us both, Fog. I’m fucked either way, but if this plan goes south, I can still at least protect him.”

“Matt—"

“I mean it, Fog. Privileged.”

The squeak of an opening door and the sound of footsteps in the corridor—the soft pad of Peter’s sneakers, the click of Marcie’s heels—made Matt’s heart pound with anxiety.

 _Shit,_ he thought. _This is gonna hurt._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: Peter comes up with an imperfect solution.


	4. Privilege

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter arrives at an imperfect solution, and Araceli faces a stark choice.

PETER

“Do you feel like you have what you need to proceed?” Marcie asked.

She had been very careful and very clear: She could not tell Peter how to violate the law—but she could show him where the margins were. She could, for example, explain what might constitute obstruction of justice, or conspiracy, or treason, and what the threshold of evidence was to charge him with those crimes. This she did with brisk efficiency—Hogarth, Chao and Benowitz might be an ethical step up from Landman and Zack, but she’d never forgotten what she’d learned at her first job.

Her advice came with caveats, of course. The lack of precedent meant they were in the Wild West, legally speaking—with no existing case law to guide enforcement decisions, she thought SHIELD would be inclined to give a lot of latitude to their least controversial Avenger and the extremely sympathetic and photogenic target of his investigation in order to keep their options open for messier cases in the future. But there were also political realities she couldn’t predict—there was no denying that the current president liked to make his point with a flamethrower and the attorney general he’d appointed would no doubt leap at the opportunity to crucify them to set an example to the rest of the world.

In other words: He was facing anywhere between a slap on the wrist and the death penalty, and Marci had no way of predicting where on the spectrum his case might fall.

But he felt he was on better footing now than he had been before. Marcie couldn’t give him a map, but she had provided him with a compass. He could only hope it would be enough to guide him from one loophole to the next.

The corridor from Claire’s office to the hallway was less than 100 feet, but it seemed like a mile. In the clinic lobby, Foggy was pacing idly, arms crossed, while Matt sat hunched over in one of the visitor’s chairs, elbows on knees. He was thumbing through an imaginary rosary, his thick platinum wedding band catching the fluorescent light above, misery like a millstone around his neck. Dark circles painted his eyes and his one-day beard, which had faded considerably since Hominus, seemed even grayer than Peter remembered it. He looked, for a moment, much older than his 45 years.

Foggy turned to face them as they entered the lobby. Matt didn’t.

“We’re done,” Marcie said simply. “You?”

“Matt?” Foggy asked.

“We’re good,” Matt said distractedly, all his attention seemingly on the imaginary rosary.

“Okay, buddy,” Foggy said, squeezing Matt’s shoulder. “I’ve got your court appearance to cover, but I’ll call you tonight.”

“Yeah,” Matt said, appearing not to even register Foggy’s touch. “Thanks, Fog.”

When they were gone, Peter sat in the chair next to Matt. He took Matt’s right hand in his and kissed it.

Matt didn’t acknowledge the kiss. Peter recognized these walls he was putting up, knew them well. The devil was gearing up for war. _Stay with me for this, Matty,_ he pleaded silently. _I need you to trust me._

But at least he spoke. “You make up your mind?”

“I think I’ve found a way to do this right,” Peter said. “Marcie said any conversation I have with you is confidential because we’re married, right?”

“Not confidential. It means they can ask and you can say no, and they can’t do anything about it,” Matt said. “But privilege is something you have to claim. If one of us waives it, anything you—or I—do decide to say is still admissible.”

“I trust you,” Peter said. “Do you trust me? Because I really need to talk to my husband about this right now.”

“I trust you want to do right by Araceli,” Matt said. “But she’s my client, and I can’t make any promises.”

Peter winced at the implied _no_ , but forged ahead—carefully. “I think I’ve found a way to buy us some time.”

“Time to do what?”

“See if Elektra really is behind this first.”

Matt shook his head. “And how are you going to do that without violating your oath to SHIELD, an international treaty, and about six other state and federal laws?”

“That’s where the trust comes in,” Peter said.

Matt shrugged and sighed. “I know I can’t physically stop you,” he said. The idea that Matt would think it might have to come to that made Peter’s throat burn. “But no private conversations with her. She has the right to have counsel present.”

“Of course,” Peter said. He stood and reached for Matt’s hand to tuck under his elbow, but Matt batted him away.

“Matt,” Peter said, catching his wrist and holding it firmly. “Don’t.” He pulled Matt into a hug and held him tight.

Matt did not immediately return the embrace, but he didn’t push him away, either.

Peter buried his face into the curve of his neck. “I’m not going to let this end us, you know,” he said. “We’re still just getting started.”

“I can’t think about that now,” Matt said. “I have to stay focused—”

“I know,” Peter said, curling his fingers around Matt’s sweatshirt. “But I need you to know that no matter how bad this gets, I love you.”

Matt relaxed a little under his touch and nodded. “I love you too,” he said, squeezing Peter tight before releasing him. “Let’s just get this over with, okay?”

* * *

MATT

 Araceli was still asleep, but Colleen was up and waiting with Claire when Matt and Peter arrived.

“You guys cool?” Claire asked Matt.

“I think I know how to buy some time and put Araceli back in control of what’s happening to her,” Peter said. “But in order to do so, I need to ask you some questions about her treatment tonight.”

“Not without me in the room, you don’t,” Matt said.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, my love,” Peter said. “Colleen, you’re the closest thing she has to family here. You should be part of this conversation, too.”

“I’m still bound by patient privacy laws, Peter,” Claire warned.

“I’ll try to keep them general, but the more detail you give me, the more I can help her,” Peter said.

Claire shrugged. “Try me.”

“First thing’s first: Have you admitted Araceli yet?” Peter asked. “What I mean is, is there any record that she’s undergoing treatment here?”

“Metro General has the transfer paperwork, but all it shows is that an ambulance dropped her off here. I have not completed admission paperwork for any patient tonight.”

“Good. Don’t, yet,” Peter said. “What reason did you give Metro General for the transfer? Did you tell them you suspected mutagenesis?”

“No,” Claire said. “They were slammed and desperate for beds. I told them I was happy to take her off their hands.”

“Have you done any tests on her yet?”

“No. Just gave her a bed and some methicillin, just in case it _is_ bacterial. Otherwise we’re just monitoring her vitals,” her eyes flicked over toward the monitor next to the bed, “which are actually looking a lot better, finally.”

“Okay, good,” Peter said. “Let’s go back to Metro General. Matt said they never gave her a diagnosis. Did they suspect anything?”

“They did not mention anything to me that would suggest they suspected mutagenesis.”

“Did the compound show up in her tox screen?”

“That’s privileged,” Claire said.

“Please,” Peter said. “I need to know what kind of paper trail we’re looking at.”

“I told you there was nothing that gave me reason to believe they suggested mutagenesis. They treated her for a bacterial infection, same as me.”

“And there’s no reason Metro General would test her DNA, right?”

“Not for a tox screen or a disease culture.”

“Colleen told me you want to do an MRI on her brain to see if it matches Matt’s.”

“Correct.”

“You can’t. No MRI. No DNA test. There can be no record of her mutation for this to work.”

“Medical records are sealed, Peter. Nobody would know except me and her.”

“What I’m about to tell you could land me in federal prison for the rest of my life, okay? And make life pretty unpleasant for you, too,” Peter said. “SHIELD doesn’t need a warrant.”

“You’re telling me SHIELD can just walk in here and ask to read my patient files whenever they want?” Claire asked.

“They don’t even have to ask,” Peter said. “In order to enforce the Sokovia Accords’ supersoldier ban, SHIELD was tasked with monitoring and evaluating any medical or psychological record related to an unexplained mutation or power. Every electronic medical records management system used in the United States is required by law to include a bit of code that sends up a flare to SHIELD anytime a suspicious result is recorded.”

“Even mine?”

“Especially yours,” Peter said. “Advanced diagnostics facilities are where they think these cases are most likely to wind up.”

“That is beyond illegal,” Matt said. “You can’t just get an all-purpose surveillance warrant just in case. Besides, didn’t you guys learn anything at all from the Project Insight disaster?”

“This isn’t the same as Project Insight,” Peter said. “This is just a piece of software that looks for a predetermined list of symptoms and flags them for investigation.”

“An investigation that could deprive someone of their rights through no wrongdoing of their own,” Matt said. “Which is the same thing that was wrong with Project Insight. How long has this been going on?”

“Since the Accords were signed,” Peter said. “About 12 years.”

“And how long have you known about it?”

Peter sighed. “You’ve always known that there are some things I can’t tell even you—”

“How long, Peter?”

“About five years ago I helped Coulson’s team track down someone who could disrupt electromagnetic signals with his hands. He’d nearly melted down the nuclear reactor where he worked, and the only way they could figure out how to restrain him was with my webbing. That’s when I found out.”

“What happened to the guy?” Colleen asked, suddenly. “I’ve never heard of anyone who could do that.”

Peter gave Colleen a hard look. “He resisted. There was a fight. He died.” Then he looked at Claire and Matt in turn. “Just so you understand the stakes if SHIELD decides to take her by force.”

Then Peter turned back toward Claire. “There’s a paper trail following her here, so go ahead and admit her. After a good night’s sleep and the antibiotics, you diagnose her with something the hospital didn’t test her for. Something serious enough to cause her to collapse but common enough not to raise any eyebrows. Colleen, take her home with you to quote-unquote recover and keep her away from people who know her well enough to ask questions she can’t answer.”

“Mononucleosis,” Claire said. “It’s common in college students. The fainting and fatigue are textbook symptoms of a bad case. Viral, so she won’t need antibiotics. Contagious, so she shouldn’t go back to her dorm or spend time with her friends. And it can kick your ass for a very long time, so it won’t be unusual for her to be out of sight for weeks or even months.”

“Good. I don’t know if this will work forever, but I hope it will give me enough time to figure out what Elektra is up to before—well.”

“Yeah,” Matt said.

Araceli was awake by the time they got to her suite.

“Hey, Bruiser,” Peter said, kissing Araceli’s forehead. “Feeling any better?”

“I don’t know. I guess a little,” she said. “Claire says the worst seems to be over now.”

“Thank God,” Peter said. “You had us worried, there.”

“I had me worried, too,” Araceli said.

“Are you still feeling—sensitive to everything?” Matt asked.

“Yeah. It’s weird. Doesn’t hurt anymore, but it’s just—really weird.”

 “I know there’s been a lot of cloak and dagger stuff happening over the past 24 hours,” Peter began. “I’m sorry about that. We had to figure out what we were dealing with and what our options were before we could talk to you about it.” He squeezed Araceli’s hand.

“So what is it?”

“What I’m about to tell you can’t leave this room, okay?”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“You will,” he said. “Araceli, there’s something about us you need to know.”

Matt felt Araceli go very still as Peter spoke. It was the same stillness he adopted whenever he paused to get his bearings in a new room, listening to echoes and footsteps and voices for clues about his surroundings.

But Araceli was not in a new room. Peter had led her into a new world.

“Araceli, we think, based on your symptoms, that you may have been injected with the same substance that gave Matt his powers,” Claire said finally. “If that’s the case—and I have to emphasize that at this point, that’s still a giant _if_ —then what’s happening to you right now is that you’re undergoing a mutation that is causing a very rapid overgrowth of your sensory nervous system. That’s why everything seems so—intense right now.”

“What about the gas Matt was exposed to? Can’t you give me some of that?”

“It’s locked in a SHIELD vault even Peter doesn’t know the location of,” Claire said gently. “And even if we did have access to it, we don’t know what a safe dose is. It killed four people. It very nearly killed Matt. I wouldn’t wish those odds on an enemy.” She reached forward and squeezed Araceli’s hand. “You can adapt to this, I promise.”

 “Why would anyone do this to me?” Araceli whispered, so softly it was barely a breath.

“Because—” Matt began.

“My job is to figure that out. In the meantime, we need to keep you safe,” Peter said, cutting Matt off. “By law you have 72 hours to register your mutation with the government. Normally what happens next is that SHIELD would take you into custody to evaluate your abilities, and give you whatever training you need to control your powers enough not to hurt yourself or others.”

“I get the feeling there’s a big _but_ coming,” Araceli said grimly.  

“You weren’t born with your mutation and you didn’t acquire it by accident, the way Matt and I did. It was done to you on purpose without the government’s sanction, and that’s illegal. Once you turn yourself in, the government will have to investigate you as a possible accomplice to—whoever did this. And I have no idea how long that will take.”

Araceli sniffled and wiped her eyes. “What happens if I don’t register?”

“Give us the room, please,” Matt said.

After everyone left and Matt heard the door shut, he took Araceli’s hand in his. “If you don’t register, it makes you a fugitive. That doesn’t mean you have to go on the run—but you can’t do anything to raise suspicions. You’ll have to learn not just how to control your abilities but to hide them. You’ll have to avoid all medical tests, including doping tests for competition, because they test for mutations now. So you’ll have to quit the Paralympic team. And you probably shouldn’t plan to have biological children, just in case you pass the mutation on to them. And you can’t ever work for the government or a government contractor or marry a federal agent or anyone with a security clearance,” Matt said. “And if you _do_ get caught—then you either face legal action or you have to run, and neither option will let you ever go back to your old life. It can be done, but it’s not a decision to make lightly.”

Araceli leaned her head back and closed her eyes. There were tears streaming down her face, but she didn’t bother to wipe them away.

“Fuck,” she whispered. “I don’t want this.”

“I can’t tell you what to do, sweetheart,” Matt said. “It has to be your decision. But I will help you no matter what, do you understand? Not every country signed the Sokovia Accords and some of those countries don’t have extradition treaties with the United States, either. There are places you could go if you had to.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I had to sign the SRA in order to live with Peter, and I wasn’t entirely sure I was willing to make that trade,” he admitted. “But I knew SHIELD wasn’t going to just let me walk away if I refused, so I made a plan to run to Ireland, just in case.”

“Ireland wouldn’t be too bad,” Araceli mused.

“Costa Rica’s an option, too,” Matt said.

“You’d really help me leave the country if I had to?”

“Yes, I would,” Matt said. “Don’t get me wrong—it’s only a last resort, but we can worry about that later. Right now you need to rest up, because we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us so you can learn to manage these new senses of yours, okay?”

Araceli made a small catching noise in her throat. “Am I ever going to feel normal again?” she asked.

Matt squeezed her hand. “Yeah,” he said. “It’ll take time, and it won’t be the same as before, but yeah, you will.”

“I don’t want to register,” she said. “Once they know who I am they can get me anytime they want, like they did my parents, and I’m not going to let them do that.”

“You’re sure?” Matt asked. “I will support you no matter what you decide, but I want you to understand that keeping this secret is going to be your number one priority for the rest of your life. More than your lovers, your family, your friends—anyone. The fewer people who know, the better. It’s an incredibly lonely life.”

“I’ll have you guys, though, right?”

“Of course.”

“Okay,” she said. “Then I’ll be okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: Both Araceli and Matt begin to adapt to her new reality.


	5. Welcome to the New World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Araceli--and Matt--adapt to her new reality.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know anyone who uses a guide dog, so I had to rely on the always-accurate internet. Please let me know if I've gotten anything wrong.

PETER

By midmorning, Araceli was already able to walk to the bathroom on her own power, though she required Colleen’s help in the shower because the noise and the echoes were too disorienting for her to safely navigate the space. But she didn’t need to sit or lean, and she didn’t need help keeping her balance to get dressed afterward.

Cyrus was clearly glad to see her up and about; with his harness off he became as affectionate and concerned as any pet, and when she and Colleen emerged from the bathroom he greeted them with a happy woof right outside the door where he’d parked himself the entire time they were in there.

Araceli laughed and dropped to the floor to ruffle his face and ears the way he liked and let her lick his in return. “Thank you, buddy,” she said tolerantly, though her nose wrinkled and she had to turn her face away from his smell now. “God, do you always stink like this?”

With no patients on the schedule all day, Claire gave Araceli the run of the place so she could start practicing getting around with the world firehosing against her senses like riot police from every angle. Unlike Matt, she had no memory of sight, no easy mental reference for the complete objects she was now beginning to perceive at once in their entirety, that up to now she only knew in palm-sized pieces. Nor did she have any depth perception yet, no sense of how many steps she could take before encountering that large rectangle there, that small trapezoid here.

Cyrus was just as disoriented as Araceli now. Once in harness, he knew she was the boss, that the only time he could disobey her is if she was in danger. But her commands weren’t making a lot of sense to him. Usually it was her job to tell him what she was looking for (find a chair, find the elevator, find the bus) but now she was just giving him directions to objects without asking him to seek them out first. When she would tell him “Cyrus, forward,” to take her toward what she would later discover to be a table, he would try to take her around it because she hadn’t named it first. To him, it was an obstacle, not the destination.

But she couldn’t name anything because she didn’t know what any of it was yet. By the third or fourth time, he was getting so worried that when she directed him into the stairwell that led down to the lab without saying “find stairs” that he refused and lay down in front of her, the way he was trained to when he detected danger.

Once Matt understood what the problem was, he knew how to solve it. “Use my cane instead.”

To everyone else he said, “Let her bump into things. Let her get lost. It’s the only way she’ll really learn.”

Peter wondered whether that was Matt talking then, or Jack. Or Stick.

She hadn’t used a cane with any regularity in years and Matt’s was really too long for her, but once she got used to it, it did allow her to explore more freely. She wandered all over the lab, touching everything, building the beginnings of her new mental map of the world.

Claire stayed close, just to keep her away from anything dangerous, while Colleen and Peter followed her around at about a ten-pace distance. Only Matt remained where he stood, leaning against the wall and holding Cyrus’ leash, and listening as best he could to her progress.

The breakthrough came much more quickly than anyone would have guessed. Araceli approached the autoclave on the back wall but stopped before the cane touched it. She pulled the cane in close to her chest, took one step, two steps forward and then cautiously—but deliberately and without searching—placed her hand on it.

“Whoa,” she said.

“You knew where that was?” Colleen asked.

“Yeah.” Suddenly, she turned back around and scanned the lab again. She’d mostly confined herself to the row of benches and equipment along the right side of the space, but now she folded the cane and began to explore without it. She kept her free hand extended a little out of habit, but she didn’t need it. Colleen gave a whispered “Oh my God” when Araceli walked straight toward a workbench slowly but without hesitation, and then turned and made for the bank of microscopes on her left.

And for a minute—just a minute—Peter realized she was beginning to move the way Matt used to.

Next was the isolation box that still held a pair of her leggings, followed by the eyewash station in the corner. They were all just shapes to her until she touched them, but she was finding each one more easily than the last, her pace quickening and her face glowing progressively brighter with delight.

But it was being able to successfully intercept Peter _while he was moving_ around to her right that that seemed to finally drive home how much her life had just changed. She placed her hand on his shoulder wonderingly, then moved it up to his face, noting the day-old stubble that lined his cheek.

“Peter,” she determined.

“Good job, Bruiser,” he said softly.

“Why are you crying?” she asked, gently thumbing away an escaping tear.

“Because—what you’re doing is incredible.”

“Yeah,” she breathed. Then she laughed and turned back toward the lab and scanned it once more. “Where’s Matt?” she asked.

Matt opened his mouth to answer, then didn’t. Instead he lifted his arm and waved it.  

A smile broke across Araceli’s face. She began picking her way around workbenches and chairs slowly but confidently. Cyrus stirred excitedly as she approached and Matt lifted his head slightly when he heard her draw near.

“Put out your hand,” she said, and he did. She found it easily with her free hand and guided it to her other hand, pressing it against the folded cane.

“Here,” she said. “I didn’t want to leave you stranded any longer.”

He closed his hand around the folded cane. “Thanks,” he said softly, and smiled, but Peter saw the sadness in it. “How was it?”

“Oh, Matt, I knew where things were!” she reported happily. “I knew where they were before I touched them! I had no idea what they were, but I knew they were there.”

Matt swallowed quickly, but distracted himself with unfolding his cane so he could keep his voice bright. “Good,” he said. “That’s the first step.”

“First step? Matt, it’s everything,” she breathed, hugging him so suddenly and fiercely he flinched.

After a moment of shock, Matt wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. “No, kiddo. You’re just getting started.”

* * *

MATT

Later that night, after Claire had dutifully falsified a mononucleosis diagnosis for Araceli’s medical records and packed her off to Colleen’s with a bandage on her ankle and strict orders to rest for at least two weeks, Matt and Peter were collapsed on their couch, too exhausted to make sense of the past 24 hours.

“You’re brooding,” Peter said gently, rubbing the back of Matt’s neck.

“A little.”

“Want to talk about it?”

Matt shrugged and tried to summon a smile. He could feel it wasn’t entirely successful. “Not really.”

“Want to talk about it anyway?”

“Maybe later?”

“Okay,” Peter said, kissing Matt’s temple. “Why don’t you get a shower? I’ll start some dinner.”

Once inside the bathroom, with the door safely closed, Matt began to run a bath. He sat on the toilet seat while it filled, head in hands, and wept.

Elektra had survived. Elektra knew he had survived. Elektra had not come back for him.

_Elektra set you up, buddy._

The intervening decade and a half had been illuminating in some ways. As he finally found balance in his life, with friends and work and yes, Daredevil, he no longer felt like he had to choose one or the other. He no longer needed the freedom to be wholly himself that Elektra had offered.

His hunger for her was a different story, though. Even now, the smell of her perfume—Chanel, if he remembered correctly—on a woman’s neck could make his heart stutter. Not that he got close enough these days, with the nose he had now, to come across it often, but sometimes if the subway was crowded, her scent could still haunt him.   

After she left him the first time, he wondered if he’d made the wrong choice, if he’d have been better off leaving school to follow her around the world to hunt down the Hand instead of nearly destroying every relationship he ever had to keep his abilities and his vigilantism secret from the people he loved.

She couldn’t be trusted—he knew this—but she still had a glimmer of a conscience, a heart capable, in its own limping way, of love, and she was the only person on Earth who understood what Stick had turned him into. Those were the parts he fixed on. Sought out, even as he tried to put her out of his mind in the years after she left him, even as he tried to push her away when she returned, even as he felt the breath escape her body for the last time in her arms on the rooftop where she died to save him. Those were the parts he clung to until the explosion at Midland Circle tore them apart.

For a while he had wondered if she had managed to survive as he had. Enough pieces of Madame Gao and Murakami had been found to confirm their deaths—namely, their heads—but there had been plenty of unidentifiable scraps of bone and tissue nearby that might have been her, or not. He’d combed the city for months after Midland Circle collapsed, working himself into exhaustion, staking out the rubble until it was finally razed and tearing up every Chaste and Hand safehouse in the city he could find. He searched hospitals and hotels, camped out in her penthouse for weeks on the chance she might return, did the same at the Wall. But a year passed, and then another and another, and there was no evidence of her in New York, no evidence of the Hand’s presence at all, and eventually he accepted the likelihood that only one miracle had taken place at Midland Circle—not two.

Until now.

He sat up quickly, his heart pounding. The subway had been crowded last week. He didn’t like riding the train alone anymore, but he had to get to court and Foggy was running late and didn’t have time to swing by the office to get him first, and it had been raining and there weren’t any cabs, and it was a route he knew well, without any transfers, so he refused Karen’s offer to ride with him to Chambers Street and chanced it on his own. And for two stops he’d smelled it nearby, just over his left shoulder, Chanel mixed with rain and the wet wool of damp winter coats.

But he didn’t allow himself to finish the thought, to wonder if it had been her. Whiffs of expensive perfume was as common as shawarma and diesel in downtown Manhattan, and he knew once he started down that path, he wouldn’t be able to think of doing anything but finding her. Again.

The beeping of the water level indicator shook him out of his reverie. He shut off the tap and eased himself into the bath, sighing as the heat shocked his skin and then began to bleed into his exhausted, cramped muscles. It had been a long time since he’d gone a full night without a bed.

_Closure’s bullshit, Murdock_ , Jessica had said late one evening over a bottle of scotch on his roof. It was the anniversary of Midland Circle, and he’d wanted to be alone. So had she. So they’d decided to be alone together. _You know how much peace killing Killgrave bought me? One night’s sleep. One fucking night without dreaming about him. You think knowing what happened to her will change anything? The Chaste is gone. The Hand is in ruins. Get it through your dumb head, Murdock: If she’s alive, she doesn’t want to be found._

It had turned into a weird night after that, with them both getting blitzed on scotch and fucking on his living room carpet until he came so violently that he started to cry. They’d never spoken of it again.

They didn’t speak of it the next time, either, or the next time, or the next. A few times a year, one of them would just show up at the other’s apartment when the darkness got to be too much, and by unspoken agreement—again with the not speaking about it—they’d fuck until the sun rose and they finally began to remember they were still alive. It was his bed she’d fled to when her mother died and her bed he’d fled to the night things fell apart with Karen.

One night she’d come over to find him gone—he’d spent the night at Peter’s—and that was that. There was no bitterness about it, no nostalgia. Neither one of them had ever wanted it to be more than it was: a safe place to lick their wounds, and nothing more.

She had smelled of whiskey and leather and wool, cheap aloe shampoo and unwashed denim, the rust of fire escapes and the fresher iron of blood. She had been too thin, always, all hard edges and sharp joints, her shoulders eternally squared against the invisible yoke of pain she towed behind her everywhere she went. Jessica had resisted love at every turn, squandered his good will as often as he’d squandered hers, but she’d remained one of his best friends until the day she died, and yeah, he’d loved her.

A fresh wave of grief sluiced through him. She’d been right: Closure was bullshit. There was only ever learning how to make room for the ghosts.

The next thing he knew, Peter was knocking gently on the door. “You awake in there?”

“I am now,” Matt said, pulling himself up a little out of the water to rest his arm on the side of the tub. He hadn’t dozed for long; the water was still plenty hot, but his fingers had begun to wrinkle.

He heard Peter let himself in and sit down on the edge of the tub, facing him. He tapped the back of Matt’s wrist before taking his hand. Matt wondered where Peter had learned to do that, telegraphing his intention to touch or hand him something, but he’d started doing it late last year and Matt had never told him to stop. He probably got it from the same website that told him to do things like greeting Matt whenever he walked into the room so he’d know where he was, or plating his meals in the same configuration—veggies, meat, starch, clockwise—every time so Matt wouldn’t have to ask. Things that helped, sure, but that he didn’t strictly _need_. But Peter needed it, he knew. Peter was bad with problems he couldn’t fix; that was the dark side of his perennial optimism. So Matt let him help.

“How are you feeling?”

Matt shrugged. “I don’t know yet. You?”

“Same,” Peter admitted.

“Yeah.” Matt tugged lightly on Peter’s hand. “Get in here already.”

Peter let go just long enough to shuck his clothes, and Matt thought with a pang how much he missed knowing Peter’s movements, sensing the graceful eddies of air that swirled behind his limbs as he slipped off his sweater and slid off his jeans.

_Stop_ , he told himself. _I can’t let this set me back_. But he knew it was too late, that today had ripped open an awful lot of stitches, that there were more injuries to come.

The water level indicator gave an offended beep when Peter eased down into the tub, and Matt found it and threw it across the room with a shattering clatter that told him he’d broken another one. Peter laughed, and for a minute everything was normal again.

The weight of Peter’s back resting against Matt’s chest helped too. He wrapped his arms around Peter’s body and nuzzled the curve where his neck met his shoulder, breathing his smoke-and-vanilla scent in deep.

_This is what home smells like_ , he told himself. _Not Chanel._

Peter tipped his head back and rested it against Matt’s collarbone. “God, I’m glad we splurged on the big tub,” he sighed contentedly.

“Stark pays you enough to splurge on the whole building if you wanted to,” Matt teased. It had taken Matt’s pride a little while to get used to the fact that Peter made far more as an Avenger as Matt did as a neighborhood lawyer, but the reality was that Peter’s salary was what made it possible for Matt to serve the clients he served in the first place. (Foggy was in the same boat with Marci, though he’d learned fast not to refer to his wife as his sugar mama within her earshot.)

“I don’t know about that, but Fran was telling me the other day she was planning to sell her apartment when she retires next year. She said she’d offer us first dibs if we wanted to knock out the wall and take over the whole floor…” Peter mused.

“You could finally have a proper darkroom, not just that shitty closet,” Matt said. This was a much nicer daydream than the thought of Elektra choosing a life without him. “Or a studio. Or we could put in a real gym.”

“And an extra bedroom or two, maybe?”

Matt laughed. “For all our house guests?”

Peter hummed a little. “Or maybe kids?”

Matt kissed the back of Peter’s ear and squeezed him tight. He knew Peter had promised long before he met Matt to father any children MJ and Gwen wanted to have, and he’d been fine with it, but recently Peter had begun to hint that they would be open to the idea of a shared custody arrangement if Matt wanted. Matt hadn’t said yes—the idea of parenting blind made him more nervous than he wanted to admit—but he hadn’t said no, either. No matter how many friends and lovers he’d had over the years, the broken parts of his heart still ached for a real family. 

_“And what about the kids? What are we going to do with them?”_

_They were sprawled on the enormous leather sofa of the apartment her parents bought for her to live in during college, because apparently that’s what insanely rich people did for their kids who didn’t want to slum it in the dorms, while Elektra using an enormous chef’s knife to carve bites of some expensive Comté from the wedge they’d been snacking on as they ignored the movie she’d put on._

_“Oh, I don’t know,” she’d said slyly, feeding him curls of cheese directly from the blade. “Sweet little Ellie and her simpleton brother, Matthew Jr., can cook and clean and stock the fridge for us so we can use our time to do—better things.”_

_“Like sex?” Matt had asked, pushing away the approaching knife to kiss her. He wasn’t sure if it was the first time he’d slipped up, intercepting her hand as deftly as he had, but a few dayslater they would break into Fogwell’s and she’d lean over the ropes so her hair brushed across his face and change their lives forever by saying, “You’re so much more than you let on.”_

He had been, once—more than he let on. And Peter still was. “Do you really want to risk passing on your mutation right now?”

Peter waited a moment before responding. “You don’t think we’re going to be successful.”

“I think keeping Araceli and ourselves out of prison is only the first step. But no children of yours will be safe until we get that law overturned for good.”

“Ours, Matt,” Peter said. “Children of ours.”

It wasn’t until later, after they’d eaten dinner and collapsed into bed, that Matt felt like talking. Though it had been decades since light or dark meant anything to Matt, he preferred waiting until Peter couldn’t see his face before talking about hard things.

“Araceli made more progress today than I expected,” he ventured. Peter had been light on details today—to spare his feelings, Matt knew—but he’d picked up enough, listening to her move around the space, listening as much to the gasps and murmurs of Claire, Colleen, and Peter as they followed her around as he did to Araceli’s footsteps and the taps of his cane. How her footsteps quickened, and eventually the cane-taps slowed and then ceased. He’d known she’d stopped using the cane well before she handed it back to him, but it wasn’t until he felt its folded bulk in his hands that he realized how confident she’d become in her newfound independence.

God, he missed it.

“Yeah, she was—” Peter paused, searching for what Matt imagined to be the least amount of salt he could find to rub into the wound they both knew was there. “—getting around pretty well at the end, there.”

“Like I used to, you mean?” Matt asked.

“Not quite.”

“Not _yet_.”

“She’s still got a long way to go before she’s doing backflips off buildings."

Oh, Peter. Bless that sensitive boy. “It’s okay to be happy about what she can do now, you know.”

“I know. I’m just a little worried about you is all.”

“I’ll be fine,” Matt said.

Peter didn’t reply, just snuggled in tightly against him, and Matt tried to steel the walls of his chest against his rough anxious breaths so Peter would not know how well and truly fucked they were. Even if everything went wrong, he could at least save Peter, but only if Peter didn’t know about the money.

“Tell me if you’re not, okay?” Peter murmured. “Promise me?”

“Yeah,” Matt managed. “I will.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: Matt and Peter turn to old friends for help.


	6. The Old Alliances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt and Peter turn to old friends for help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter that made me realize this AU diverges sharply after Defenders--Daredevil Season 3 does NOT apply. 
> 
> If you don't watch Agents of SHIELD (and full disclosure--I haven't finished Season 5) all you need to know is that Daisy Johnson/Quake, as a child, spent some time at St. Agnes' under the name Mary Sue Poots.

MATT

“Hey, Matt,” Karen said. “Foggy said you weren’t coming in today. Are you feeling better?”

“I wasn’t sick, Karen,” he said, and he could tell from the thickness of her silence that she knew a giant pile of shit of was about to come her way.

“What’d you get mixed up with now?” she asked resignedly, taking the soy double shot caramel latte he was holding out toward her.

“Fog’s on his way in right now,” he said, gesturing toward their conference room. “But I can get you caught up in the meantime.”

It never got easier, confessing to her that he was in trouble. His inability to stay out of it was what had driven them apart all those years ago, even though she knew who he was and what he did, even though she made him promise to tell her, no matter how deep he was in it, no matter how hard it was to say the words out loud. The truth never made her worry any less, but it helped to know which demons were real.

At least now he was spared that anguished smile he knew she sometimes made, that tiny ripple of grief that radiated across the smooth curve of her cheek, when things were really bad, when she was trying to talk herself down from tears because there wasn’t time for that now, because as soon as she let herself feel anything she would make mistakes she couldn’t afford to make.

It wasn’t true, that last part, but he’d never been able to convince her otherwise. And he knew she was doing it now, could hear it in her voice as she asked questions and sought clarification on certain points; she was interviewing him like she would interview any of their clients, because although she was still technically just a paralegal, Matt had no doubt she knew enough law to pass the bar exam. He’d even offered to help her pay for law school if she wanted to try. She’d just laughed at the idea and reminded him that she needed to graduate from college, first. “I’m afraid that ship’s sailed, counselor,” she’d said, lazily flipping a paperclip at him.

He still remembered catching it.

“Earth to Matt,” Karen said.

“I’m sorry—what?”

“What bank is it in? The safe-deposit box.”

“Hudson Federal, on Fulton Street.”

“And where’s the key now?”

“What’d I miss?” Foggy asked, bustling into the conference room. “Sorry I’m late. Alice puked all over me and I had to change.”

“Safe-deposit key,” Matt said. He reached into his pocket and pushed it across the table toward her. “I usually store it in my document safe at home, but it would be better for Peter if it lived under a different roof.”

“I’ll keep it in my office safe,” Foggy said, swiping the key off the table with a scrape. “Since you can’t hear well enough to crack it anymore.”

“Low blow, Nelson.”

“Do you know how many times I’ve had to change that combination over the years? I could have paid for Alice’s first year of college with all those locksmith fees.”

“Just a few more questions,” Karen said, dragging them back on track. “Who else knows about the money?”

“Just us. Elektra’s lawyer knows about the box, but not what was in it. Well, I told Stick about it, but he’s dead.”

“You sure about that?” Karen asked. “I can’t believe these are words I’m saying out loud, but did anyone cut off his head before he was buried?”

Matt grimaced. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “All I know is the Health Department buried him on Hart Island after nobody claimed his body. He went in as a John Doe and his grave’s unmarked. I tried to find it once but those records were destroyed during Hurricane Sandy.”

“So. TBD,” Karen said. “When was the last time you accessed the box?”

“Just the once, with Foggy.”

“We’ll need to confirm that it’s all still there as soon as possible,” Foggy said. “Like, today.”

“I called yesterday and made us an appointment for noon.”  

The box was the size of a small suitcase. Once they were alone with it, Foggy unlocked and opened it. Karen’s gasp was all Matt needed to hear to know the money was all there, along with the braille note Elektra had left with the cash.

_My darling Matthew,_

_Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy security. I hope this will be enough to see you through whatever obstacles life puts in your way. My only regret is that I cannot be by your side. You were never just a mission to me. Always know that my love for you was real._

_With all my heart,_

_Elektra_

Even now, his voice shook at the end as he read the note aloud. He’d memorized it long ago, but feeling the words beneath his fingers gave them new life, and with it, fresh power to wound him. _Goddamn you, Elektra. What have you done?_

“You okay?” Foggy asked pointlessly.

“Yeah, sure,” Matt said. “I just—really wanted this part of my life to be over.”

“Me too, buddy,” Foggy said.

Even with the electric counter, it took them nearly two hours to count the money. But it was all there, all ten thousand $100 bills, and when Karen placed the last bundle back in the box, none of them ever wanted to touch cash again.

“How do you fold hundreds, anyway?” Foggy asked as he locked the box again. They’d lived together seven years, and for seven years it had been his job to help Matt sort his cash. Even now, Foggy folded Matt’s change for him every time they grabbed lunch.

“Paper airplanes,” Matt deadpanned. “Origami cranes. Fuck if I know—I’ve never carried a hundred.”

“Really?” Foggy and Karen asked in concert.

“I never made it my business to put the interests of the rich above the interests of the innocent,” Matt said primly, straightening his tie. “And God knows I never sold coke.”

“Hey!” Karen said angrily. “What the fuck was that about?”

“That was uncalled-for,” Foggy said more evenly.

Matt flushed. He wasn’t sure why he said it—except maybe to remind them that he wasn’t the only person in the room with shit on his hands. Granted, he had a lot more shit on his hands than they did, but it was just a matter of degree, right?

Right?

But the anger he felt in the silence that followed chastened him. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “That was mean.”

“Yes,” Karen said coolly. “It was.”

“I know this is hard, Matt,” Foggy said. “But you cannot afford to alienate us on this. So get your shit together, okay?”

Matt winced. “Okay.”

“So the money’s all present and accounted for,” Karen said finally. “There’s nothing more we can do here. Let’s go get some lunch.”

* * *

PETER

“Hey, I’m glad you could make it,” Daisy said, kissing his cheek before waving toward the table she’d commandeered. “I couldn’t reach out to you the way I would have wanted after Matt got hurt, and I’m sorry about that. It couldn’t be helped. But I didn’t want you to think I didn’t care.”

His heart had nearly stopped when Daisy Johnson texted him that morning to let him know she was in town for some SHIELD business and wanted to know if he was free for coffee that afternoon. They’d worked together on a few joint SHIELD-Avengers missions and had an easy rapport, but they weren’t exactly friends. But they shared a terrible bond, for it was Daisy who’d had to make the terrible call to kill the nuclear plant worker before he melted down the reactor and irradiated the entire Tennessee Valley.

_She cannot possibly know already,_ he told himself. Still, the coincidence was too close for comfort, and as much as he hated the prospect of lying to her face, he didn’t dare pass up the chance to learn what she knew.

“Oh, no, of course not,” Peter said, absolving her guilt with a casual wave as he sat down. “Believe me, I understand how weird lives like ours can get.”

She gave a wry smile. The last two years had been hard on her, he could tell—she was thinner and harder now, with dark circles under her eyes and a smile that did not come nearly as easily to her face as it used to. “How’s he doing these days? I had dinner with Tony a few weeks ago and he told me he’s back at work now.”

“Adapting. We both are. The work helps. He’s sorry he couldn’t join us but he’s got depositions all day today.” How easily the lie came. Daisy gave no indication that she didn’t believe him.

“Always needs to be saving someone, huh?”

 “That’s my guy,” he said, grinning to conceal his unease. Maybe this was just an awful coincidence after all.

That feeling lasted all of five seconds. “Did I ever tell you we were at St. Agnes’ at the same time?” she said, with a practiced nonchalance Peter could see right through.

“No, not once in the five years we’ve known each other have you ever mentioned that you knew my husband when you were a kid,” he said, an uncomfortable challenge bubbling up in his voice.

“I’m sure he never noticed me. I was six, and he must have been in high school by then. And, y’know, blind. Besides, my name was Mary Sue back then. I remember seeing him in the dining hall, chapel, courtyard, that sort of thing, but I doubt he’d remember me. I went to a foster home a few months later, and by the time they sent me back to the orphanage he was gone,” she said lightly. “It just felt weird to assert a connection that wasn’t even really a connection.”

“Well, you’re asserting it now,” Peter said mildly, trying to will his heart to stop trying to claw its way out of his chest. “So what’s up?”

“Nothing.” She flushed a little. “I mean, there was something, but I can’t talk about it.”

“We never can.”

“Someone I cared about very much sacrificed his life so I could save the world from a truly awful future.” She shook her head and looked down at her coffee. “And it made me reevaluate some things. Everything. My whole life, really.”

He met her gaze and sat in silence. He could tell she hadn’t come for his sympathy. So: gallows humor it was. “If you’re going to confess your love for me, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed.”

She laughed—genuinely, he thought—and kicked him lightly under the table. “What it made me realize is that as much as it sucked to have to go to an orphanage, I think those few months at St. Agnes’ were probably the most normal, stable months of my life. There was this nun I remember, Sister Maggie—she was good to me. A real hardass, never smiled, but she made me feel _safe_ , you know? It was a safe place for a scared little girl to hide from the world for a while. And thinking about it—and this _connection_ to Matt, and to _you_ —it helped. It reminded me that no matter how weird things got for me, I’d had a real life with real people I could _trust_ in it, you know?”

“Are you in trouble, Daisy?” Peter asked suddenly, softly. There was something bafflingly, distinctly _wrong_ about this conversation—she seemed completely genuine, but his skin had been low-grade crawling ever since they sat down. He wasn’t sure if that meant coming had been a mistake or the exact right decision, but he supposed it was time to find out.

“No!” she laughed, and he was startled to realize that he didn’t believe her—and that she was not even trying to convince him. “Oh, no. It’s just that—well, all I can say is that right when I thought I’d seen the worst humankind had to offer, it helped me remember that I was still a _person_ , not just another mutant carrying a grenade in my DNA. You know?”

“Perfectly,” he said, trying to block out the alarm bells going off in his head long enough to work out whether Daisy was really trying to tell him what he thought she was. “So what brings you to town, anyway? You didn’t say on the phone.”

“Sorry,” she grinned over her coffee cup. “Classified. You get it.”

“Pretty sure my security clearance outranks yours.”

“All the same,” she said sweetly. “UN Security Council briefing, I can tell you that much. Which reminds me—you didn’t hear it from me, but traffic’s going to be a nightmare from Lenox Hill all the way down to Chinatown, if you can believe it.” At the mention of Chinatown, his spidey-sense went into full-on high alert and he instinctively smoothed his sleeves down over his arms. “You should just stay in Hell’s Kitchen if you can.”

She locked eyes with him for a long minute, before breaking contact and standing up. “Speaking of, I should go,” she said apologetically. “Next time let’s try for a proper meal, okay? It’s been too long.”

“Let’s not wait two years, either,” Peter said, drawing her into a hug. “How much time do we have?” he asked softly into her ear.

“None,” she said just as softly, kissing his cheek. “I’ll call you when I can.”

Peter stood on the sidewalk just long enough to see her climb into a black SUV that had been idling on the curb outside the café the entire time before whipping out his phone and walking as fast as he dared in the opposite direction.

“Colleen,” he said without preamble. “We need to move Araceli right now. I’m texting you the address. Don’t pack. Just come.”

* * *

MATT

Lunch was forgotten the moment they emerged from the vault and his cell phone began buzzing with notifications about missed calls. When he listened to Peter’s voicemail, a cold acid spread through his chest.

“Get me a cab,” he ordered Foggy, “and get back to the office.”

“What’s going on, Matt?” Karen asked.

“I don’t know yet,” he admitted. “I’ll call as soon as I find out.”

“Do you want us to come with you?” Foggy asked.

“No,” Matt said urgently. “I will call you. I promise.”

“Just answer me this, then: Is either Elektra or Stick going to be at the other side of this cab ride?”

“No,” Matt said, impatience nearly bringing him to tears. “Araceli’s in trouble. For God’s sake, Foggy, please help me.”

The words _help me_ hung between them like a soap bubble neither one of them dared to break. “Okay, buddy,” Foggy said after a moment, clapping Matt on the shoulder and stepping off the curb to wave one down.

He didn’t tell the cabbie the destination until Karen had closed the door behind him. “West 49th and Eighth,” he said. “Northwest corner.”

He had not returned St. Agnes since the day he left for college. He felt no nostalgia for it—he was grateful that he’d had a safe, supportive place to live, but to this day it served as a difficult reminder that no one had wanted to adopt him. The shame had faded with time, but the pain remained. No, he’d never intended to set foot inside again.

But as Aunt May always said—if you want to hear God laugh, tell Him your plans.

_Exempli gratia_ : He had planned to die beneath Midland Circle with Elektra in his arms. He had been completely comfortable with that. He’d been fighting with the devil inside him all his life, and right then, in that moment, as he heard the elevator thump and shudder to screeching halt as the cable snapped 100 feet up and Jessica shouted at Luke and Danny to start climbing even though he could feel the explosions beginning to daisy-chain through the building’s load-bearing columns, he knew then that it was too late, that the devil had won. The Midland Circle was coming down for them hard and not one of them was getting out alive.

And it was all his fault. Stick had wanted to cremate her, but Matt had insisted on burying her properly. Of course, his intention was to ensure her bodily resurrection after the return of Christ, not before. Man plans, God laughs.

The last thing he remembered was the force of the collapse tearing Elektra out of his arms and throwing him into some kind of space—all he could remember was there was a wall at his back and thunder all around him and then a not-quite-nothing that told him time had passed before he drifted back to consciousness in Jessica’s bed two days later.

Later he would learn that Jessica, Luke, and Danny had returned to the scene an hour later, after it had been cordoned off but before it was cleared for entry by emergency personnel. The heat had been awful, Jessica told him, and they’d be coughing up dust for days, but it didn’t matter. They’d worked all night, Jessica digging with her hands and Danny breaking the big stuff with his fist and Luke crawling through the wreckage to check their progress, emerging with shredded clothes and unbroken skin.

They’d found him an hour before dawn, bleeding and unconscious. He was alone. They did not bother to look for Elektra; with his mask lost, their priority was to get him out of the wreckage before the sun had risen enough for rescue crews to come in and start their work.

Their other priority, left unstated, was to let her die if she had not already. He’d forgive them for that eventually.

The familiar pattern repeated itself yet again: Claire hauled out of a much-needed sleep to blearily dress and grab her medical kit and take a cab to whatever bed Matt was currently bloodying. Of course she’d done it. Of course Colleen had come to sit by him so Luke and Danny could go home to rest while Jess stretched out on her sofa and drank herself to sleep. Of course Karen and Foggy had come later that day. Three days later, even Misty had come, still wincing at the weight of the empty sleeve of her coat hanging off her right shoulder.

He’d almost gotten them all killed, and they’d all come back anyway.

And now, finally, Elektra had come back, too. He was beyond worrying about how anymore: He knew some members of the Hand had escaped, and he knew what they could do with a dead body. The operative question at this point was why, after all this time, she’d chosen to return.

But that question was no longer his to answer. That was Peter’s job now. His job was to protect Araceli from SHIELD and nothing else. Elektra had been dead to him for more than a decade. She could stay dead a little while longer.

Couldn’t she?

He was in such a rush that he forgot to ask the cab driver for directions to the front door, but it didn’t matter—Sister Maggie had obviously been standing by the window waiting for him because she came out to meet him as soon as the cab drove away.

“I thought your days of making trouble here were over, Matthew.” He recognized her voice immediately—even 25 years later, she had lost none of her sharpness. “Then again, I thought the same of Mary Sue Poots.”

“I’m sorry, Sister,” he said. “My client is in danger and she needs your help.”

“And help we will, as much as we can,” Sister Maggie said, taking his hand and tucking it under her arm, turning him toward the door as she did so. “Do I want to know how you got involved in Mary Sue’s business?”

“It’s better if you don’t.”

She took a deep breath and he felt her square her shoulders beside him. “Very well, Matthew,” she said grimly. She guided him so quickly through the orphanage that he hardly had time to process it, for less than a minute later they emerged through the back door and were hurrying down the simple colonnade that joined the orphanage to the back door of St. Michael’s church.

“Where are we going?”

“To Mary Sue’s old room,” she said, ushering him inside. She paused just long enough to unlock a metal gate to the right of the corridor. “Downstairs,” she prompted, pulling the gate shut behind her as he located the steps in front of him.

“You kept her in a cage?”

“We weren’t keeping anyone _in_ , Matthew,” Sister Maggie said crisply. “Come, now. Your friends are just through here.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: Matt and Araceli hunker down while Peter and Colleen try to figure out what the hell is going on.


	7. Wolves at the Gate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter makes a surprising discovery. Matt helps Araceli get used to the more unpleasant aspects of her new powers.

PETER

Mary Sue Poots was clearly not the only person St. Michael’s had sheltered over the years. The basement room was furnished with three bunk beds, an old crib, and three cheap chests of drawers. A scatter of mismatched rugs warmed the floor and plain cotton panels hung over the windows. There was a metal bookshelf between the second and third bunks stocked with a strange array of paperbacks and religious literature. A full bathroom had been roughed in at one corner, a refrigerator, microwave, and kettle stood in another, and at the center stood a large dining table surrounded by battered metal folding chairs. A plate of cheese sandwiches sat untouched on the table. It was simple but comfortable and clean; a sad place for a child to live, Peter thought, but it would do well enough for them.

Colleen took a seat at the table but Araceli curled up immediately on one of the bottom bunks and clutched a pillow to her chest. Cyrus lay protectively on the floor in front of her.

“You feeling bad, Bruiser?” Peter asked softly, sitting on the bed next to her and rubbing her back.

Colleen caught Peter’s eye and shook her head. “She barely slept last night.”

Araceli curled up tighter. “I don’t want them to find me,” she whispered. A tear rolled down her cheek.

“I won’t, sweetheart,” Peter said. God, she was shaking. “We’re going to be safe down here, okay?”

Suddenly she sat up and snuggled up against him. She began to cry then, softly but steadily, and he pulled Araceli in tighter, rocking her gently and stroking her hair. He didn’t know if it helped or not, but eventually her sobs subsided into a slow staccato of hiccups and sniffles. He looked up to see Colleen wiping her eyes, and he wanted nothing more than to be in both places in the room right now. He knew exactly how much this was breaking her heart.

“I’m getting snot on your shirt,” Araceli said, laughing tearfully and rubbing at a damp spot on his collar.

“Not the worst thing I’ve had on me, Bruiser,” he said, trying to shove away the memory of Hominus’ brain splattered across his mask. “Feel a little better now?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“I’ll take maybe.” He kissed the top of her head before releasing her.

“Are those cheese sandwiches?” she asked, tentatively pointing toward the table where Colleen was sitting. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her point before.

Colleen managed a smile. “Good job,” she said. “Can you tell what kind?”

“American, I think? On white bread. With mayonnaise.”

“How about you eat one and find out?” Colleen said.

“Ugh. Food is so gross now.”

“And yet it remains no less necessary,” Peter said, standing up and holding out his hand. “C’mon. We both need some lunch.”

Her stomach growled as if to settle the argument. “Fine,” capitulated, taking his hand.

But she didn’t need his help finding the table—or a chair, or selecting a sandwich from the platter. She still walked with her hand out and still needed to feel her way around a little, but her little touches and checks were more to confirm than to find. Cyrus got up and cautiously approached her, nosing her hip as she scowled in disgust at her sandwich, and she reached down to scratch his head absently. “Hey, buddy,” she murmured to him, feeding him bits of sandwich. “Why don’t you help me finish this?”

Peter was too restless to sit, and instead paced as he ate. It wasn’t until he saw the place that he realized Daisy had lied about seeing Matt at the orphanage. Down here, she would have seen no one. His heart broke a little at the thought of her spending months down here at a time, but the lie was proof of the tale: SHIELD was looking for Araceli already.

But how? Claire, Foggy, Marci, Karen—he trusted them all with his life. Whatever tipped SHIELD off, it must have happened at Metro General.

He went into the bathroom, closed the door, and dialed Claire. “Hey, is this a good time to talk?”

“This is a secure line,” she said.

“You still have her transfer paperwork?” he asked, not even daring to say Araceli’s name. “Who was the referring physician?”

He heard her shuffle through some papers on her desk. “It was one of the residents, but I only have the attending’s signature. Her name’s Prudence Adiyemi, although she only came in once. I can’t remember the resident’s name. Clark, I think. Cook. Something like that. Real meathead—couldn’t place an IV to save his life. I’m sorry—it was so chaotic I don’t remember much else. Why?”

“Has anything—has anyone asked you about her? Or has anything weird happened at the clinic? System update, security checks, anything like that?”

“No, nothing. What’s wrong?”

“We’re safe,” he said. “That’s all I can say.”

“Matt?”

“On his way now,” he repeated. “You call me if anything—and I mean anything—feels weird to you, okay? A look. A guy you don’t like standing on the corner. A delivery person you don’t recognize. Tony suddenly decides to drop in and say hello. Anything.”

“I will,” Claire promised.

“They’re here,” Araceli said softly as he came back out into the main room. “They just came inside.”

Peter had heard nothing.

“Just Matt and the nun?”

“Yeah.” She cocked her head and turned it toward the back corner of the room. “Don’t walk around here barefoot, by the way. We’ve got mice.”

“I’d have slept just fine not knowing that,” Colleen said grumpily.

“Then I won’t tell you about the roaches.”

“Brat,” Colleen laughed, mussing Araceli’s hair. “Just for that, you have to finish your sandwich. We can’t leave any crumbs.”

_No children of yours will be safe until we get that law overturned for good._

The entry gate rattled open, and he looked up to see Sister Maggie and Matt at the top of the stairs. There was something profoundly familiar in the way Matt held her arm, in the way she guided him through the gate and down the stairs. It may have been a long time since they’d seen each other, but they were deeply at ease together all the same.

And then, as they stepped into the light, there was something else he saw—something that startled him so much that Araceli jerked her head in his direction.

“Hey baby,” he said, reaching out to hug Matt as he let go of the nun. “God, am I relieved to see you.” It was true, yes, but he also hoped it would cover up his surprise.

Because there was no doubt in his mind now: Matt and the nun had the same eyes.

She caught his stare over Matt’s shoulder and gave him a tiny single shake of the head. He nodded just as subtly, but he raised his eyebrows to say: _We’re going to have a conversation about this very soon_.

She cast her eyes down in assent. “I’m sure you have a lot to discuss. I’ll be back down this evening with some supper. I’ll keep my phone with me if you need me.”

“Peter, what’s going on?” Matt asked, his voice dragging Peter’s mind back from its dizzying discovery.

“A friend from SHIELD tipped me off,” Peter said. “They know about Araceli.”

“How?” Colleen asked.

“I don’t know,” Peter said. “But it must have happened at Metro General, so that’s my next stop. I want to see if our idiot resident, Dr. Cook or Clark or something else, was even a doctor at all.”

“Let me go,” Colleen said. “I know what he looks like, and you need to be running down Elektra. If SHIELD is onto her, we don’t have a second to waste.”

“No, someone has to stay behind to protect Araceli,” Peter said.

Matt cleared his throat. “I can do that.”

“Matt—”

“Don’t, Peter,” Matt said. “I know I can’t fight like I used to, but I can still fight, okay? Once I get ahold of them, I can bring them down.”

He fixed Colleen with a questioning look.

Colleen gave a vague shrug. “We’ve sparred in the ring a few times. It—went better than I thought it would.”

“Thanks,” Matt said sourly.

“I’m sorry, Matty, but if you think I’m going to let you get yourself killed just so I can flatter you, you’ve got another thing coming.”

“Excuse me,” Araceli said. “I can fight too, you know.”

Colleen reached over and took her hand. “I know, sweetie.”

“Look, Peter, nobody likes this, but we’re out of both options and time,” Matt said. “The truth is that if anyone gets down here, it’s going to be too late anyway, and no matter who gets here first, you’ll do us more good aboveground than down here.”

“He’s right, you know,” Colleen said.

“I know,” he said, taking Matt’s hand. “He usually is.”

* * *

MATT

He’d said goodbye to Peter the way they always had before a mission—with a hug and a kiss and a promise to be careful, and nothing more. They never promised to come home safe and they never promised to come home at all.

“You’re scared,” Araceli said when he returned. “Your heart’s beating fast.”

“Yeah, I am.” He made his way back down the stairs toward her. Scared was a poor word for it, to be honest. He felt utterly exposed.

“Me too,” Araceli admitted.

“Good,” he said. “It’s time for some boxing lessons.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope,” Matt said, shucking his suit jacket and dress shirt and untucking his undershirt so he could move more freely. He set his glasses on the table.

“What am I supposed to hit?”

Matt clapped his hands and then held them up loosely, palms out, at about shoulder height. “Me,” he said. “You’re going to try to hit my hands.”  He wiggled his fingers a little. “You can pick that up, right?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Okay, first things first,” he said, dropping his hands and reaching out toward her. “Give me your hand. I’m going to show you how to throw a punch.”

She was a fast learner, and more importantly, she wanted to learn. The judo served her well—it didn’t take her long to start instinctively combining the punches he was teaching her with the grappling moves she was already an expert at. They sparred all afternoon, pulling their punches, but still hitting plenty hard. He still wasn’t used to how often she caught him by surprise and he knew a sighted opponent would make things even harder, but he couldn’t let that thought get the better of him. Every practice punch bought her another chance to get away, to survive. He had to focus on that.

Eventually, around five, they were both getting too tired and sloppy to continue, and decided to call it a day. While Araceli was in the shower, Sister Maggie came downstairs with a stack of clothes from the church’s community closet and sorted them into the chest of drawers. “Araceli’s are in the top drawer, yours are next, Colleen’s after that, and Peter’s are on the bottom,” she said. “Should be enough for a day or two.”

“Thank you,” Matt said.

“I’ll bring some supper down for you after the children eat.”

“We’ll be fine,” Matt said, ignoring his growling stomach. He’d had the last cheese sandwich but it had hardly been enough. “Whatever is easiest for you.”

“What’s easiest for me is not harboring a federal fugitive in my church basement,” Sister Maggie said, batting his shoulder lightly. “But we can always make do.”

After she left, he called Foggy to let him know that he probably wasn’t going to be coming back to the office for a few days, and briefed him on a couple of cases that had filing deadlines coming up soon.

Foggy sighed. “Be careful, buddy,” he said. “Okay?”

“I’ll try.”

“And if you show up at the office with another black eye, I’m firing you.”

“You can’t fire me. We’re partners.”

“Try me.”

Matt smiled despite himself. “I’m always careful.”

“You’re never careful,” Foggy said.

“You’re a peach, Fog,” Matt said, hearing the water shut off in the bathroom. “Gotta go.”

Fortunately, Araceli had managed to grab her laptop before she and Colleen fled that morning, so they were able to check the news for clues about the manhunt. There was nothing about Colleen or Araceli being fugitives or even missing—and the disappearance of Danny Rand’s widow and a gold-medal Paralympian would have definitely made the news—but there was also nothing about the United Nations being in session. That was ominous, Matt thought. SHIELD did not want this apprehension public. But then he smiled to himself: He could use that. Karen still had a good relationship with Mitch Ellison at the Bulletin and had good contacts at NY1 and 1010WINS. He could put Araceli’s name on every front page, TV screen, and radio in the city if he needed to.

Outside, he could hear the crisp patter of sleet picking up. It was going to be a bad night for a fight.

No sooner had Sister Maggie set their dinner trays on the table, Araceli was sprinting to the bathroom and vomiting in the toilet.

“She’s not pregnant, is she?” Sister Maggie asked with alarm.

“No,” Matt said, standing up to follow her. “She’ll be okay. Go on, take care of the kiddos.”

“I’ll have my phone on me if you need anything.”

“We’ll be fine.”

He found Araceli weeping softly on the floor next to the toilet.

“Hey, sweetie,” Matt said, sitting down next to her, sweeping back her hair as she leaned forward for another heave. “This part sucks, I know.”

“I can’t do this,” she whispered. “Everything tastes too—much. I can’t—”

“Yes, you can,” he said, helping her up. “I’m going to teach you, okay?”

As she brushed her teeth and washed her face, he could not help but remember his own experience. He’d lost nearly 15 pounds during his first year—by the time his father died, he was back to wearing the pants he’d worn in third grade. It wasn’t until Stick arrived, six months after he came to St. Agnes’, that he’d really learned how to eat again.

“I don’t want to eat,” she said as they sat back down at the table.

“Let’s just try the mashed potatoes,” he said. “Put a spoonful in your mouth but don’t swallow it at first. Just pay attention to how it tastes and feels. Don’t try to decide whether it’s good or bad—just be curious about it. You want to observe the sensations without judgment, like an archaeologist digging up a dinosaur. Each new sensation is just another bone in the skeleton—no better, no worse than any other bone. You just catalogue it and move on. Okay?”

“Paleontologist.”

“What?”

“Archaeologists dig up human stuff. Paleontologists dig up dinosaurs.”

“Whatever,” he said, smiling. (Had Stick ever smiled at him? He didn’t think so.) “Here, I’ll go first.”

He took a bite of mashed potatoes and worked them around his mouth a little before swallowing them. “So to me, they’re warm, but not hot. They’re a little gritty, like they came from potato flakes instead of real potatoes. They’ve got margarine, not butter on them. There’s not enough salt for my taste. They’re a little dry, too.”

“Sounds yummy,” Araceli said glumly.

“Once you learn how to do this, it won’t matter what they taste like. You’ll be able to eat anything,” Matt said. “Believe me, that will come in handy when you realize how gross most restaurants are.”

“Fine,” she sighed. He heard her spoon scrape on the plate and her lips smack a little as she took the potatoes off the spoon. “The potato flakes are stale,” she declared. “The margarine is oily. The salt has a metallic taste to it.”

“That’s the iodine,” Matt said. “Good job.” (Never once did Stick tell him ‘good job.’)

“None of this makes me want to eat it, Matt.”

“Want has nothing to do with it,” Matt said. (Stick had at least been right about that part.) “You have to eat. It’s not optional. So right now, the biggest challenge you’re going to have is overcoming your disgust. Disgust is like—a burglar alarm. It exists to warn you when you’ve come into contact with something bad for you, like spoiled food or raw sewage. What’s happened to you is that your threshold is suddenly much, much lower than it used to be and your brain’s not used to it yet, so it’s setting off all kinds of false alarms. What we need to do is reset those triggers so you’re not having to fight your disgust every time you have to eat.”

“So basically it means I just have to get used to eating a lot of gross stuff.”

“No. It means you need to redefine what ‘gross’ means in the first place.”

“Great.”

“I know it’s daunting, but it gets easier,” Matt said. “And the bonus is that when you find something you really enjoy—it’s going to be amazing. What’s your favorite fruit?”

“Strawberries,” she said.

“Go to the farmer’s market this summer when they’re in season. You’ll be in heaven.”

“I guess sex is going to be really good now, too, huh?” she asked slyly.

Matt choked a little. “Yes.”

“Are you blushing?”

“I guess,” he said. “God, you’re catching on fast. It took me years to figure this stuff out.”

“Do you miss it?” Araceli asked. Another scrape of the spoon, more cautious chewing followed by a barely audible wet sound. Did she just spit out her food or did she just swallow it? He couldn’t tell.

“Yeah, I do.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “If I could give this to you, I would.”

Matt cleared his throat. “Come on, finish your potatoes,” he said. “We’re doing carrots next.”

Later that night, around eight, Sister Maggie led Karen down into the basement refuge. She handed Matt his laptop from work and an envelope with ten $100 bills in it, courtesy of Foggy and Marci.

“Thank you,” he said sincerely. “For everything.”

“I’ll say this, Murdock. Life’s never boring around you,” she said.

“Would you believe me if I told you that I never intended for anything like this to happen again?”

“Eh,” Karen said. “Don’t push me.”

Matt laughed a little at that. “Fair enough.”

Karen patted his arm and walked over to the sleeping area where Araceli was sitting with Cyrus.

“Araceli?” Karen said as she approached. “I’m Matt’s friend Karen. I brought a cane for you. I had to guess at the length but I hope it’ll work. I’m just going to put it here on the bed next to you.”

“Thanks,” Araceli said softly, ruffling Cyrus’ neck, rattling the tags on his collar.                                                                                                                           

“And is this Cyrus?” Karen asked as she knelt before the dog, letting him lick her face. “Aren’t you just the prettiest boy?” she said, laughing. “I know we’re going to get along just fine.”

“He likes to work, so he’ll need lots of walks,” she said. “He doesn’t like to be cooped up like this. You can take him to work if you want. He’ll like that.”

“Sure thing,” Karen said, smiling. “My boyfriend, Pete, is a big dog lover. Between the two of us, we’ll keep him busy.”

“He’s used to sleeping in the bedroom, but he’s not allowed on the bed,” she said. “Don’t put his harness on—he’ll get confused if he’s wearing it but not working. He doesn’t really play with toys anymore, but he likes a little tug-of-war with a rope sometimes. And he really loves peanut butter, so watch your sandwiches.”

Karen laughed. “Got it.”

“He doesn’t like thunderstorms, but regular rain is fine,” Araceli continued rapidly, anxiety frizzling the edges of her voice. Cyrus whined inquisitively. “And, um, don’t give him canned dog food because it’ll make him puke. And he doesn’t like having his feet touched, or his ears. And, um—what else, what else…?”

“He’s going to be fine, Araceli,” Karen said softly.

“It’s just—I’m afraid he’s going to worry about me.”

“Can I hug you?” Karen asked.

“Okay.”

There was a squeak of bedsprings as Karen hugged her tight. “We’re not going to let anything happen to him. We’ll make sure he knows he’s safe, okay? He’s going to think he’s at Disneyland.”

Araceli sniffled a little. “I know.”

“Come on,” Karen said, and they stood. “Let’s show him that it’s going to be okay.”

Araceli walked him to the foot of the stairs, then knelt one more time to scruffle his neck and kiss the top of his head. “Bye, buddy,” she said softly, a false brightness entering her voice. “See you soon.”

The minute she heard the gate close, she sat on the floor and burst into tears.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Matt said softly, moving toward her voice and sitting down beside her. “He’s going to be fine. Karen and—Pete—are good people. He’s going to be fine.”

She leaned into his arm and rested her head against his shoulder. “It’s just that we’ve never been apart once in six years. He’s literally my safety net, you know? Well, I guess not anymore, but—”

“But you love him.”

“Yeah.”

“I hate that this is happening to you, kiddo,” he said, brushing her hair back with his fingers.

“It’s just—” she said, her sobs resuming. “I didn’t want this, Matt. I don’t—I just want it to go away. I just want someone to take it _out_ of me. It’s like a cancer and I just want it _out_.”

“I know,” Matt said gently, turning a little so he could hold her with both arms. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

“I hate being like this,” she whispered. “I just—really hate it.”

Matt was struck with a memory of sitting in Josie’s across the table from Misty not long after his injury. _I hate being like this. I just really fucking hate it._ He swallowed hard to keep his voice steady. “It won’t feel like this forever,” he said, wondering if she could detect the half-lie in his voice.

“It’s not fair.”

“No, kiddo, it’s not.”

“I just—I just—”

“I know,” Matt said, squeezing her tight. “I know.”

She hiccupped and pulled away. “This is now the second time I’ve lost it today. Way to go, tough girl.”

“Well, to be fair, you’ve had a pretty shitty couple of days,” Matt said.

She laughed a little at that.

“You’re exhausted,” Matt said. “Why don’t you get ready for bed? I’ll teach you some tricks for falling asleep, okay?”

“Okay.”

While she was in the bathroom, Maggie came up beside him. Her touch startled him—he’d forgotten she was still there. “You’re a good man, Matthew,” she said. “What you’re doing for her right now—”

“Not just me.”

“Your friends are a credit to you, but we both know this is your mission.”

“Mission?” Matt asked cautiously, suddenly wondering how much Peter had told her about the situation.

“You’re taking extraordinary measures to save her,” Sister Maggie said. “I’m not a lawyer but I’m pretty sure you will be disbarred for this.”

“That’s probably a rosier outcome than I’m anticipating, but yes.” Matt gave a soft, joyless laugh. “You’ll probably be arrested for this, too, you know.”

“It doesn’t matter which side of the bars I’m on, Matthew. God will find a use for me wherever He sends me.”

“That’s quite a cavalier statement,” Matt said admiringly.

“I’m tougher than I look,” she said, patting his arm before collecting the dinner trays. “I’ll be back down to check on you after I get the kids to bed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The technique Matt is teaching Araceli is basic mindfulness. 
> 
> Next up: The truth comes out.


	8. Things Fall Apart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daisy gives Peter an important clue. Matt learns the truth about Maggie.

PETER

He found Daisy sitting in the back booth of a smoky basement bar on Avenue D and slid in across the table from her.

“I don’t like doing this in civvies,” he said.

“Yeah, well, your other outfit doesn’t exactly blend,” Daisy said. “But if you’d rather do this on a rooftop with sleet beating down on you, be my guest.”

“Fine.”

“So,” she said taking sip of her beer and clearing her throat. “Ever wonder why we kept a dead woman on our Ten Most Wanted list?”

“Because her death was never confirmed and she was our only remaining link to the Hand?” Peter asked rhetorically.

“Because not only was her death not confirmed, but we’ve known she was alive for a while now. She resurfaced at an abandoned Hand safehouse in Marseilles about five years ago, but she got away before we could pick her up. She’s stayed ahead of us ever since, but every now and then we pick up a scent. She usually sticks to the Francophone world—we’ve found her in Port au Prince, Abidjan, Pondichery, Phnom Penh—and then two years ago we spotted her in Montreal.”

“Jesus. That’s—”

“Just a 90-minute drive from Hominus’ compound in Vermont.”  

“Why weren’t we briefed about this before the raid?”

Her eyes flicked down to the black silicone band on Peter’s left hand.

“Everyone was briefed on it except me? Because of Matt?”

She nodded.

“Fuck,” Peter said, pounding his fist into the table. “What the actual fuck, Daisy? They sent me in with an incomplete threat assessment?”

“We thought the odds of her actually being there would be very small,” she said. “We were right.”

“That’s not the point, Daze.”

“I know.”

“So you’re saying that Hominus was allied with the Hand?”

Daisy gave a waffling shrug. “Hominus was a true believer. We don’t think he would have worked with her if he’d known who—or what—she was. We suspect she discovered him in the wild and groomed him from afar, probably online,” she said.

“It’s clever,” Peter said, with grudging admiration. “If he’d succeeded, he could have wiped 90 percent of her enemies off the map for her.” _Instead, I ended up wiping his brains off my mask._

“Exactly.”

“So how does this get us to Araceli?”

“We were tracking one of her operatives when we saw him wipe out on the ice near her,” Daisy said, pulling up a photo on her phone and sending it to Peter as she showed it to him. “We knew it wasn’t an accident, so we looked into everyone in the immediate vicinity. When we learned who Araceli was, we began surveilling her, and when she made an emergency trip to the hospital the next day, we knew what had happened.”

“How?”

“Twelve years ago, Elektra hacked into Roxxon and stole a dragon’s horde of proprietary information. I’m sure Matt’s told you all about that.”

“She was trying to prove that Roxxon was laundering money for the Hand.”

“That was part of it,” she said. “But she stole something else, too: The formula for the chemical that gave Matt his powers.”

“She’s been planning this for 12 years?”

“No, she was still with the Chaste then, remember? I think she did it because she was curious about him.”

“Or because once she knew how he’d been made, she could figure out how to _unmake_ him, too.”

Daisy shrugged. “I don’t think that was her plan. Her feelings for Matt—she’s insane, but they’re real. I think she just wanted a part of him to keep, no matter what happened between them.”

“So dosing Araceli was—what? Proof of concept?”

Daisy nodded. “I think she chose someone Matt knew so he’d know it was real,” she said. “I think she wants him to know she can cure him.”  

“No, she can’t,” Peter said. “Hominus made him immune.”

“She may not know that,” Daisy said. “But that means we can use it. What does he have that she thinks he’d be willing to trade for it?”

“Him,” Peter said, his stomach sinking. “She probably wants him.”

* * *

MATT

“What’s wrong with the girl, Matthew?” Maggie asked, placing a glass of whiskey in his hand and sitting catty-corner from him at the table. “She’s obviously suffering. Why?”

“It’s better—”

“If I don’t know, yes, yes,” Maggie said with mild exasperation. “I’m not stupid, Matthew. She’s behaving exactly like you did when you first came to us.”

“You noticed.”

“It’s hard to miss.”

“It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: Anything I tell you has to remain secret.”

“You’re in a Catholic church, Matthew. Secrets are what we do.”

Matt said a silent prayer. “She was exposed to something that sent her senses into overdrive. It happened a few days ago.”

“And this happened to you, too?”

He nodded. “The chemicals that blinded me did it,” he said. “I didn’t know what was happening to me at the time. Everything was just—too much, all the time.”

“And we didn’t believe you.”

“I didn’t know how to explain it,” Matt said. “And even if I could, I was afraid you’d think I was crazy.”

“Well, we did anyway,” Maggie said. “You’re not the only traumatized child to come through our doors, Matthew.”

“You did your best. I know,” he said. “I’m not like that anymore, though. I shouldn’t—”

“—tell me?” Maggie asked wryly. “Matthew, if I’m going to help you protect this girl, I need to know what’s going on.”

“You remember when the Defenders died?”

“Everyone remembers, Matthew.”

“I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I lying unconscious in a freight elevator inside that warehouse when it happened.”

Maggie laughed. “Come now, Matthew.”

He pointed to the thin scar that ran from his jaw to his temple. “That’s where I got this.” He stood and rucked up his t-shirt to show her the thick, footlong scar across his side. “This came from the Yakuza,” he said. He pulled the collar of his shirt down past his collarbone to reveal an arrow wound. “This came from the Hand.” Then he parted his hair above his left eye to show her a white streak from where a bullet grazed his forehead. “That came from the Punisher.” Then he leaned over and pulled up his pants leg, revealing a broad splash of scar tissue that spilled across most of the side of his right calf. “And I got that at Midland Circle.”

“You’re Daredevil?”

“Was.”

“How on earth is that possible, Matthew?”

“Do you remember that occupational therapist you hired to work with me for a few years?”

“Mr. Stick. How could I forget? He gave me the willies, but it was obvious how much he was helping you.”

“He’s the one who taught me how to meditate, how to control my senses so I wouldn’t get overloaded all the time,” Matt said. “But it was more than that. He taught me how to use them to get around without my cane. I used to be able to echolocate with almost any sound, and I could feel air pressure change and shift as people moved. I would be able to hear your heartbeat and tell if you were lying. I could smell your sweat and know you were afraid. I could feel, from here, if you had a fever. If I knew you well enough, I could usually tell if you were smiling.”

“Did he teach you how to fight like that, too?”

“Yes.”

“Why on Earth would he do that?”

Matt laughed bitterly. “Would you believe it if I said he was training me to join a mystical army that was formed to fight another mystical army driven by the quest for immortal life?”

“And did you? Join that army?” Maggie was struggling to keep her voice neutral.

“No. When I was in college, he sent a woman to seduce me—another student. Her name was Elektra and we fell in love. She tried to get me to come back with her, but I wanted to stay here. I wanted to help my city.” Matt shrugged. “If you don’t believe me, ask Father Lantom. He knows.”

“I’ve seen too many aliens in this city to doubt you, Matthew,” she said, a faint note of fondness warming her words. “Besides, for all the fights you got into here, you were never the bully—you were always the one beating the bullies up. No, I believe you.”

 Matt gave a fleeting smile. “I suppose my story isn’t exactly the kind of outcome you like to share with your donors, I expect.”

Maggie laughed softly. “I don’t know. It sounds like you made all the right choices under extraordinary duress. If that’s not a success story I don’t know what is.”

“Elektra is back, Sister,” he said. “She’s the one who did this to Araceli. And I think she did it in order to get to me, and I can’t—”

“You care very deeply about her,” Maggie said, taking his left hand in hers. She ran her thumb over his wedding ring. “Tell me, do you have children of your own?”

“No. We’re talking about it, but—just talking,” he said. He shrugged and gave a rueful grin. “Turns out there _is_ something Daredevil’s scared of.”

“It’s always scary,” she said. “But I think you’d be good at it.”

“I had a good dad,” he said. He waved his hand up toward the ceiling in the general direction of the orphanage. “And a bunch of good moms, I guess.”

“You don’t need to flatter me, Matthew. I know this was a hard place to grow up.”

“You did your best.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Do you ever wish you’d had any kids of your own, Sister?”

Maggie paused—taking a drink, by the sound of the ice in her glass—then gave a wan-sounding laugh. “Yes, I did.”

“Why didn’t you?”

She paused again, but not to drink this time. “I did,” she said. “I had a son before I came here. I was 17 when he was born. I was forced to give him up.”

“Oh,” Matt said. “I’m so sorry.”

“It was for the best,” she said quickly. “Back then, nobody understood what postpartum depression was. They just called me an unfit mother and took him away from me.”

“That’s awful.”

“It was for the best,” she said. “It’s a terrible illness. What it makes you believe—” she paused and swallowed. “I thought I needed to save him from the devil, and that the only way I could was to send him to God. One day when he was about two months old, I lay him in the sink, turned on the water, and then got on my knees and prayed for his soul. Thank God his father happened to come home from work early a few minutes later. If he hadn’t—”

“Jesus.”

“I was fortunate enough to have a compassionate judge—a woman. She sentenced me to a year in a juvenile psychiatric facility. When I got better, they said it was safe for me to return home, but I was too ashamed. So I came here.”

“I’m surprised they allowed you to work in an orphanage after that.”

“I was a juvenile, so my records were sealed,” Maggie said. “You’re not the only one with secrets, Matthew.”

“Wasn’t it hard to be surrounded by so many children?”

“Yes,” she said softly. “It was the hardest thing in the world.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“Penance,” she said simply.

“I never knew my mom,” Matt said. “She died after I was born. I guess you know that, though.”

“It was in your file,” Maggie said. “Do you ever think about her?”

“When I was a kid I did, yeah. My dad never talked about her or kept pictures of her around, so I’d make stories up about her,” he said. “I used to think she was an astronaut, like on Star Trek, and she was on a long mission to find aliens.”

He laughed a little at this and so did she.

“And now?” Maggie asked. “Is she still out there, exploring the stars?”

Matt shook his head. “Do you know I touched my dad’s face after he was shot? I heard it happen. I found him in the alley behind our apartment. I felt the bullet hole and the blood. I felt the heat draining out of his body.”

“Oh, Matthew.”

“I knew what ‘dead’ meant after that,” he said, finishing the last of his drink. “I never knew her, so I don’t miss her, exactly—not the way I miss my dad—but I’m curious about her. What she was like, what parts of me came from her, you know?  I don’t know anything about her besides what was on my birth certificate. I don’t know what she looked like or what kind of music she liked or what she liked do with her time. I don’t even know where she’s buried, you know? I think that’s what bothers me the most now.”

“It’s difficult not to have closure.”

Matt smiled and pulled his hand away. “A good friend of mine once told me closure was bullshit.”

“It can be,” Maggie said. “But I think it’s better to have closure and be disappointed by it than to wonder.”

“Did you find any? Do you ever wonder how your son turned out?”

“I hear about him from time to time. I know that he grew up to be a fine man,” she said. She turned slightly and brushed the hair off his forehead. “That’s all the proof I need to know I’d made the right choice.”

“Have you ever thought about reaching out to him?”

“Of course.”

“Why don’t you?”

Maggie sighed. “Because I don’t want to upend his life just so _I_ can feel better.”

“That’s very noble of you,” Matt said dryly. “But he might be wondering what happened to you too, you know.”

“I don’t think he is,” she said.

“How could you possibly know what he thinks?”

She took his left hand in hers, extending his arm so she could push the sleeve of his t-shirt up over his shoulder, revealing the rest of the portrait of his father tattooed there.

“That’s my dad,” Matthew said. “Peter says it’s a good likeness.”

“It is.”

“You knew him?”

“Yes, of course,” Maggie said. “Jack and I went to high school together.”

“You must have known my mother, then,” Matt said, his heart pounding. “Her name was Margaret O’Riordan, but she went by Gracie.”

She raised her hand to touch his cheek, and he jerked back, suddenly understanding. “That’s impossible.”

“I’m sorry, Matthew.”

He stood up and began to pace as much as he dared in the unfamiliar space, thoughts pouring too quickly through his head for him to hold onto any one of them for very long. He needed to move—he needed to punch. “All this time you let me believe I was alone in the world. You lied to my face. Why?” He was struggling to keep his voice soft enough to keep from waking Araceli.

“How could I have possibly explained this to a child, Matthew? It only would have caused you more pain.”

“I’ve been an adult for more than 25 years. You’ve had plenty of time to tell me.” Rage was boiling through him now—he could feel his fingernails digging into his palms as he clenched his fists.

Maggie sighed. “Do you remember what I told you when you left us?”

“You told me not to look back.”

“I meant it. I was afraid that opening up that part of your past would keep you from embracing your future,” she said. “That you would feel obligated to have a relationship with me whether you wanted to or not. Whether you were prepared to or not. I didn’t want to burden you.”

“Sure you weren’t just protecting yourself from that?”

“It’s a fair question,” Maggie said evenly. “Perhaps.”

“Then why tell me now, after all this time?”

“Because Peter knows,” she said. “We look alike. Not much, but enough. He noticed. I don’t know if your other friend did or not.”

Matt gave a soft, bitter laugh. “You’re only telling me because you got caught.”

“Yes.”

A memory of waking up on his couch after his fight with Nobu, concussed and bloody, Foggy barking at him not to pick at his bandages and then throwing his cowl at him, demanding answers. Maybe they were related after all.

“Dad said you got into a lot of fights in high school, too. Couldn’t abide a bully.”

“That’s true,” she said. “I’m afraid you got that from me.”

“What else?” he asked, still angry, but curious.

“Our hair’s the same color and we have the same eyes and nose. You got your dad’s eye color, though. Mine are blue,” she said, taking his hand in hers and pressing it to her cheek. “The prosthetist did a good job matching your eyes, by the way. I’m not sure if I could have stood it if he’d gotten it wrong.”

He reached forward with his other hand, too, and took her face in both his hands. From taking her arm, he could tell she was small and slight, and her features were similarly delicate. He couldn’t really say whether she resembled him or not, but he knew this was more for her benefit than his. She wanted to be seen, and Matt, despite his anger, felt he ought to give at least _that_ to her.

“I skipped sixth grade, so I was a year younger than everyone else in school. I’m very good at math. My favorite record is Joni Mitchell’s _Blue_ album. I like to read mysteries—really dark ones. And I like to grow things—I kept geraniums in flower boxes when I lived with your dad, and I help the children keep a vegetable garden here. But not cilantro. I think it tastes like soap.”

Matt huffed in surprise. “Me too.”

He felt her smile under his touch and then without thinking, he bent forward and kissed her forehead. Then he stepped back quickly and touched his mouth. Why had he done that? He was still so angry at her.

“I’m not naïve enough to think that means I’ve been forgiven,” Maggie said, saving him from explaining himself.

“No.” The word came easily. He wasn’t ready to forgive her, but he believed her and she was his mother and there was a nonzero chance he would be killed or arrested for treason before the night was out and he guessed he just wanted the chance to kiss her before he died or got locked away forever.

“You don’t have to, you know,” she said. “You don’t have to love me. Once this business with the girl is over, we don’t even have to keep knowing each other. The only thing I’ve ever wanted is for you to be happy—and if that means staying out of your life forever, I’ll do it.”

“Oh no,” Matt said, scrubbing the back of his head with his hand. “You don’t get to drop this on me and then just—walk away. No. You don’t get to do that.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right. You have every right to be angry,” she said. “We don’t have to make any decisions tonight. Perhaps it would be best if we both tried to get some sleep.”

When he didn’t respond, she added, “I’ll leave the bottle.”

He could hear her uncertainly shifting her weight for a moment before turning to go.

“Maggie?” he said. “Thank you.”

“For what, Matthew?”

“Closure.”

* * *

PETER

“Hey, what’s up?” Peter asked. He’d slipped out through the back and was halfway up the alley when Colleen called.

“Your hunch was right,” she said. “There was no Dr. Cook or Clark on duty last night. No residents with that name at all. No telling whether he’s SHIELD or Hand, but it’s something.”

“Where are you now?”

“I just left the hospital. I had to wait until the evening shift to talk to the right person. I’m heading back to St. Agnes now. Any leads on your end?”

“Tons,” he said. “I’ll brief you both when I get back to the ranch. I’m not far. I’ll see you soon.”

“Okay, sounds g—HEY!!” There was a thump and a clatter and a grunt, and then the sound of distant fighting. “It’s him!” she shouted faintly, and then the line went dead.

His heart began to pound. He called Matt, but swore when it went to voicemail. He and Matt had different phones—why hadn’t he thought to check the reception on Matt’s before he left? He left a message anyway. “Get Araceli and get out of there. Find a cab, get to Karen’s. Do it now.”

Then with only a cursory glance around the street to see if anyone was looking—blessedly, in this weather there was not—he raised his hand and shot a web up to the top of the building across the street. Civvies or not, he was out of time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: You didn't think that was going to end well, did you?


	9. The Unexpected Cut

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elektra has a surprise for Matt.

MATT

The world came back to him in a bleary rush. His head was pounding and his mouth was dry and he had no idea where the hell he was. A leather surface, maybe the backseat of a car, or no, there was a throw pillow under his right foot. So a sofa. He tried to feel around him and realized that his head was lying in someone’s lap. And that perfume—

A woman’s hand stroked the hair off his brow. “Hello, Matthew.”

His heart tumbled and he made a mewling whine that shamed him. He reached up and grabbed her hand. She allowed it, even threaded her fingers through his.

“It’s good to see you again,” she said, then pushed him back down when he tried to sit up. “No, not yet. It’ll take a few more minutes for the sedative to wear off. Good boy, down you go. I’ve got you.”

“Where’s Araceli?” he said, his voice just a croak.

“Getting her first good night’s sleep in a few days, I would imagine,” she said. “She got a higher dose than you, but don’t worry. She’ll be fine. And before you ask—no, I didn’t hurt anyone else getting to you. The lock on that gate was absurdly easy to pick, you know.”

He did a quick inventory of his person—he was fortunately still wearing his clothes, meaning Elektra had nabbed him before he’d gone to bed. Aside from the headache from the sedative, he was unharmed, though his ears were ringing a bit and there was a strange residual buzzy feeling shooting through his body.

He nodded, then shook his head. “How did you even survive?”

“The explosion blew me into an unfinished sewer tunnel. I crawled out until I reached the river. I made my way back to Alexandra’s to find that I was the only survivor. As the Black Sky, I assumed control of the Hand and made it my own,” she said, almost proudly. “I kept the name because money can’t buy that kind of brand power, of course, but I destroyed the resurrection chamber. We’re all about data centers now—artificial intelligence—that’s where true immortality lies these days. Sure, we steal a lot of bitcoin and raid offshore accounts to stay liquid, but overall our body count is much lower than it used to be.”

“Lower.”

“I am what I am, Matthew,” she said. “That hasn’t changed.”

“Where are we, anyway?”

“That would ruin the fun, wouldn’t it?” she said.

“This isn’t fun, Elektra,” Matt said, deciding to sit up anyway. This time she let him.

“I know, darling,” she said, rubbing his arm. “For the record, I never wanted us to reunite under these circumstances.”

“Did you ever want to reunite at all?” he asked harshly.

“No,” she said after a long pause. “But I made a mistake that I want to fix.”

“Which one?”

She laughed, and the beauty of it was a knife in his chest. “I deserved that.”

“Yes, you did.”

“My mistake was Hominus.”

“What?”

“I discovered him about three years ago on a right-wing message board and realized he could be useful. He was a trained microbiologist with a subspecialty in epigenetics and an axe to grind against the Avengers,” she said. “I realized he could solve a very expensive problem for me.”

“You—armed him?” Matt asked, a thick gorge rising in his throat. “He wanted to commit genocide! He murdered my friends!”

She was silent for a long minute. “Bankrolled, not armed. And as I said, it was a mistake,” she said softly. “I never meant for him to target you. He went rogue—the warehouse trap in Brooklyn was never part of the plan, but, as you say, he was more interested in genocide than strategy.”

“Oh my God.” Matt stood up and quickly moved away from the couch, stumbling back as he caught his calf on the corner of the coffee table. “Do you know what he _did_ to me?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice uncharacteristically catching on the vowel. “That’s why I’m here. I’ve brought you the cure.”

“There’s no cure, Elektra!”

“Of course there is,” she said. “Look at your little judoka. I synthesized the compound you were exposed to as a boy, and it _works_.”

“Not on me,” Matt said, laughing bitterly. “Hominus got what he wanted: I’m immune.”

“Not to my formula,” she said, standing and pressing a small pill into his hand. “It contains a targeted immune suppressor. Take it once a day, _et_ _voilà_. Powers restored. Miss a dose, _c’est finis_. The hangover’s a little unpleasant, I’ll admit, but it won’t be nearly as bad as—the first time.”

“I don’t suppose this is the kind of prescription I can refill at Duane Reade,” he said, turning it over in his fingers.

“I’m afraid not.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, throwing the pill away with a faint skitter. “Daredevil is dead. If I take this I can never go home.”

“Then come with me.” She moved in close, so close he could feel her breath against his mouth, and the old instinct to kiss her flared up hot in his chest. “Don’t you remember, Matthew? London, Madrid, Tunisia? We can still go. You still have that money I left you, don’t you?”

“How would you know?”

“Because I _know_ you, Matthew. I knew you’d never spend it.”

He gave an involuntary wincing smile. Even Foggy had assumed he’d spent it. There was still nobody who knew him as well as her.

“Tell me, what does your husband think of you harboring a terrorist’s money?” she asked. “Congratulations, by the way. I always knew you liked butter on both sides of your bread.”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Oh my God, he doesn’t know, does he?” she laughed. “Oh, Matthew. You are _so_ predictable.”

“Buying me didn’t work so now you’re going to try blackmail?” he asked with a joyless grin. “Sweetheart, _you’re_ even more predictable than—” Suddenly an electrical fire seemed to break out through every nerve in his body, hot and cold and painful all at once. “Elektra—” he gasped, falling to the floor. “What—?”

 “The discomfort should pass in a few minutes,” she said, kneeling next to him, stroking his hair. God her _perfume_ —it was unfolding in vivid fractals of scent now, subsuming him with memories of her skin, how he loved to let her wear his scarf in the winter just so it would smell like her. “Consider it a free trial.”

He scrabbled back further, and the echo of his palms slapping the polished concrete floor caused the rest of the space to resolve into focus. He became aware not just of her, sitting close, but the sofa and the coffee table and—yes—an armchair over there. There was a bank of windows to his left and the ceiling was high. Behind him, stairs led up to what he thought might be a loft, and—he snapped his fingers—yes, there was a kitchen to his right and a fireplace straight ahead.

A cold sick feeling of recognition washed over him: This was her old apartment in Midtown. It was here that he’d lost his virginity to her and lost a semester’s worth of nights in her bed and eventually lost her, too. It was here that she’d revealed who she was and her relationship to Stick. It was here that she’d tried—and failed—to persuade him to join the Chaste and follow him around the world to fight the Hand, and it was here that he’d tried—and failed—to persuade her to stay with him instead.

Outside the wind picked up and the sleet shattered against the windows and her bed smelled slept-in and a half-empty glass of wine sat unfinished near the sink and someone in the building flushed a toilet and a couple argued in the elevator at the end of the hall and a child chattered ceaselessly to a small yappy dog downstairs. The apartment was empty—not only devoid of heartbeats but breathing, movement—all of it. He knew the Hand’s old tricks and he detected none of them here. No, they were alone.

He turned his focus to her, now—redolent of perfume, yes, but also silk and leather and steel and blood and just the tiniest wisp of sweat as she swept her hair off the back of her neck and tied it up into a ponytail. And: Quick, steady heartbeat and light, fast breaths. She was _enjoying_ this.

He clambered to his feet and walked toward the windows, hand out in front of him although he scarcely needed to. Even his depth perception had returned. No, all his old skills were still there, and not even buried all that deeply yet.

“Isn’t it delicious, Matthew?” she asked gently as his hand contacted the freezing cold glass. He could feel steady, subsonic hum of the building vibrating at its natural resonance. “Like old times.”

“I don’t want this,” he said, taking his hand off the glass.

“Of course you do,” she said. “I know you, Matthew. You’ve soldiered on like the good Catholic boy you are, making the best of it, but you’re not kidding anyone. This is _all_ you’ve wanted for the last 18 months.”

“Not all,” he said softly, turning his face back toward her.

“I can’t bring your friends back anymore,” she said, joining him at the window, placing her hand lightly on his back and kissing his shoulder. Her heart was beating hummingbird-fast with arousal; he could feel heat flush through her skin. “But I can give you this. Let me do that for you.”

He leaned into her and wrapped his arm around her waist, drawing her in against his chest. He turned and breathed in the scent of her hair (vanilla, green tea, coconut oil). She hummed softly and tilted her face up to him, lips parted for a kiss. He smiled and touched his nose to hers and as he did his fingers closed around the sai on her right hip.

“Oh, Matthew,” she said, not moving. “Let’s not do this.”

He whipped the sai out of its holster and pressed the tip hard against her heart. He could feel the fabric of her blouse tearing beneath the sharpness of it. “You have to answer for what you’ve done.”

“Do you really want SHIELD to question me?” she asked, clasping her hands over his. “They don’t know about you and me, do they?”

_I hate to tell ya, buddy, but I think she set you up._

“SHIELD can’t hurt me any more than you already have.”

“Sure they can,” she said. “Your friend Franklin is a very impressive lawyer but we both know that once I’m done with you, you’ll be spending the rest of your life in prison.”

“No, I won’t,” he said, finding the small open space between her ribs and she gasped as he drove the blade in deep. _For Luke and Danny and Trish. For Jessica most of all._ No, for Jessica he wants to stop her heart altogether. But he won’t give Elektra the satisfaction of changing him, of turning him into what she was. “You’d never let SHIELD get their hands on you in the first place.”

She stumbled away from him, one hand on the sai and the other flailing out to the side. “Matthew—”

“You’ll live,” he said coolly as she fell to the floor. “I just punctured your left lung, though. If you want to call an ambulance and turn yourself into law enforcement, be my guest, but I’m betting you’re just going to call one of your minions instead. But you’d better do it fast.”

She gave a weak, wet laugh. “Oh, Matthew, that _was_ a surprise. I’m starting to think we’re more alike than you want to admit.”

“We’re nothing alike,” he said bluntly, wiping her blood off his hand on his sweater—hoping whatever color it was, it was dark enough to hide the stain—and quickly scanning the apartment one more time. But no, there was no sign of his cane or his wallet or his phone. It didn’t matter—in this weather, at this time of night, he wasn’t likely to run into anyone who recognized him.

The pill, however, was lying where it had rolled up against the kitchen counter. He said a silent prayer for strength and dropped it into the sink, flushing it down the garbage disposal before he left.

“Never come back to New York, Elektra,” he said, turning his face back toward her as he left. She was still breathing, though it had become more labored. “And never, _ever_ try to come back for _me_.”

Outside, the city boomed with energy. Without his coat, the cold bit into him with tiny teeth, but he didn’t care. Adrenaline was crackling through him like lightning, and he couldn’t help but laugh as he took in the neon buzz and crash of Times Square a block to his right and the bustle of the theaters just letting out to his back. He tucked his head, crossed his arms, and walked quickly—more quickly than he had in 18 months without his cane, almost jogging—neatly dodging pedestrians as he hurried along, just another New Yorker trying to get the fuck around these slow tourists so he could get on with his night.

Once he was clear of the crowds he broke into a proper run, grinning as he did so. The sleet rattled around him and he knew he didn’t have much time to get back to St. Michael’s before the pavement began to freeze—but it wasn’t frozen yet and he damn sure wasn’t going to waste his chance. He ducked into an alley and heaved himself up onto a fire escape, then balanced on the rail and leapt across the alley to the fire escape opposite. He wasn’t wearing gloves and the metal was slick and his hands slipped a little, but his reflexes kicked in because they were still there, still sharp, and he managed to hold on well enough to swing his leg over to catch himself before he fell.

He climbed the fire escape quickly, hopping up onto the roof six stories up. All around him the city he’d been so homesick for all this time snapped into sharp relief—the buildings and the water towers and the cell towers and the antennas and the whoosh and hum of traffic through the canyons of the streets below. Not many people out tonight in this weather, but there were a few, and their conversations bubbled up and popped all around him—a young couple laughing because they were caught out without an umbrella, a man pissed off that he couldn’t find a cab, a group of teenagers whooping and teasing one of their boys for having no game with the girl who just shut him down at the bodega just now. “Nah, man, I ain’t no stalker,” the kid snapped back. “Real men respect the ladies.”

Yeah, the kids were all right.

He knew exactly where he was—he had a clear rooftop road to St. Michael’s and—he touched the tarpaper to make sure—probably 15-20 minutes before the surfaces began to ice over. That gave him just enough time to get back to the church.

He tried a handspring, then another. That got him to the retaining wall that divided this building from the one it abutted. He backflipped over it and ran to the next building, dodging and weaving around lawn chairs and illicit barbecues that dotted so many of these roofs, then hurdled over the next retaining wall, ducking into a diving roll and springing back up to his feet in a single, smooth motion.

Christ, this was amazing.

He ran and cartwheeled and leapt his way toward the church, wishing he had his billy clubs with their grappling line so he could really fly. Peter had taken him out on his webs once this past summer, after Matt mentioned how much he missed it, but it hadn’t been the same. It hadn’t really been fun at all, to be honest—it had mostly been uncomfortable and dizzying and they’d cut their outing short after less than an hour.

Well, he would take what he could get now, at least. He tried not to think about Elektra suffocating to death on the floor of her penthouse with his fingerprints all around and he tried not to think about Colleen and Peter freaking out to find him gone. There was nothing he could do about either of those things now. But he could do this. He could do this.

The large stone cross atop St. Michael’s drew into focus as he approached. He leapt onto its roof and scrabbled across the tiled pitches to the belfry, slipping in beneath the carillon and hoping to God that it wasn’t about to strike the hour.

The service door was unlocked—the bolt had been broken since he was a boy—and he hurried down the stairs two at a time until he reached the basement.

Three heartbeats, all beating fast. Shit. One male—Peter’s of course, he recognized him right away—and two female—one young and frightened, obviously Araceli, and one older and—not Colleen.

Her voice confirmed it. “I don’t like it any more than you do, Peter, but we have to bring her in.”

“I trusted you, Daisy.” This must be Peter’s SHIELD contact. Shit.

“I know.”

“Araceli, clear your throat if you can hear me,” Matt whispered. “Do not let anyone know I’m here.”

She cleared her throat.

“Good girl. I’m right at the top of the stairs. I can hear everything. I’m going to just stay here and listen for a little while. I won’t let anyone hurt you, okay?”

She cleared her throat.

“Are you and Peter restrained?”

She cleared her throat again.

“You okay, Bruiser?” Peter asked, concerned.

“My mouth is dry,” Araceli said faintly, putting on a wonderful show of helplessness. “Could I get some water?”

“Soon,” the woman—Daisy—said.

“Stall,” Matt whispered. “Get her talking so I know what’s going on.”

“I want to talk to Colleen,” Araceli said. “I’m not going anywhere until I know she’s all right.”

“We can arrange a phone call later,” Daisy said. “But it’ll be faster if you just come with me.”

“I’m not stupid, lady,” Araceli said bluntly. “You’re lying.”

“We really do have her.”

“I know,” Araceli said, exasperated. “But you could get her on the phone right now if you wanted to, so quit bullshitting me. You probably have Matt too.”

Peter laughed a little at that. “You should know better than that, Daisy. She’s a human polygraph now.”

Daisy sighed. “We don’t have Matt, okay?” she said. “But I think Peter might have a good idea where he’s gone.”

“I told you, I don’t know. When I got back, the lock was broken, Araceli had been drugged, and he was gone. I think if your hunch is right that Elektra’s trying to cure him, we might want to start considering the possibility that, oh, I don’t know—she fucking _took_ him.”

“Or she went with him voluntarily.”

“Without his cane, his phone, or his wallet? Jesus, he even left his coat.”

“Yeah, well, whether he’s a hostage or an accomplice, you’re both going to have to come with me until we find him,” Daisy said. “You know that, right? We can do it quiet or we can do it loud, but it’s happening.”

Matt clenched his fists and sighed. “Act surprised,” he whispered.

Araceli cleared her throat.

“Jesus, get her a glass of water,” Peter said angrily. “She’s just a kid.”

_Time to win an Oscar, Murdock_. He was probably already in pitiful-looking shape already, but he mussed his hair and tore the sleeve of his sweater before flinging open the exterior door behind and letting it slam to get their attention. He put his hands out on front of himself and made himself take stumbling steps forward, groping wildly for the gate in front of him.

“Matt!” Peter cried.

“Peter?” he called. “Thank God.”

“I’m right here, baby,” he called. “Jesus, let me go, Daisy!”

“Is Araceli okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “SHIELD’s here, Matt.”

He could hear the hesitation in Daisy’s breath and then a deep clank as his vibranium shackles fell to the floor. He sprang up the stairs to meet him at the gate, wrapping Matt in his arms and frisking him for injuries. “Are you all right?”

“I don’t know—yeah,” he said weakly. “I’m cold.”

“Let’s get you in some dry clothes,” Peter said, helping him down the stairs. “We’ve been set up,” he whispered into Matt’s ear. “SHIELD has Colleen and my now-ex-friend Daisy’s here for Araceli.”

“How—?”

“I don’t know,” Peter said, kissing his temple. “What happened?”

“Elektra.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“Sorry to meet under these circumstances, Matt,” Daisy said, approaching them. “Jesus, are you bleeding?”

“I don’t think it’s mine,” Matt said, his teeth chattering. “Elektra took me. There was a fight.”

“You fought her?” Daisy asked incredulously. “And you won?”

“She underestimated me.”

“Dry clothes now,” Peter barked at her. “Questions later.”

“You’ll forgive me for not turning my back,” Daisy said.

He let Peter lead him over to the dresser and strip off his wet things, checking him more closely for injuries as he did.

“I’m fine, really,” Matt whispered, shivering now.

“Pants,” Peter said, pressing a pair of sweats against his chest. “Your hands are scraped up.”

He hadn’t noticed. It must have happened on one of the roofs. “I tripped on the sidewalk,” he said. “Are they bleeding?”

“Not much.”

“How did you even get back here without your cane?” Daisy asked.

“I grew up here. Once I figured out where I was, I knew where I needed to go,” Matt said, drawing a sweatshirt over his head. God, it felt good to get into something dry and warm. “It’s not something I want to try again anytime soon, though.”

“Why didn’t you ask someone for help?”

Matt winced.

“Jesus, Matt!” Peter cried. “We talked about this. You have to ask people for help!”

“Can we go back to the part where you knew where you were, Matt?” Daisy asked.

“Her old apartment at 45th and 7th. Penthouse.”

“And what are we going to find when we get there?”

_Hopefully just a puddle of Elektra’s blood, and not her body_. “It was just her, I think. I don’t know,” he said. “She said she wanted to cure me. She wanted me back. She—tried to get close. I got ahold of one of her daggers and stabbed her. I don’t think I killed her, though.”

“Jesus.”

“Araceli?” he asked needlessly. “Where are you?”

“I’m at the table,” she said. He put his hand out and walked carefully toward her voice until his fingers touched her shoulder.

“Oh, thank God,” he said, leaning over and kissing the top of her head. “I’m sorry, kiddo. Are you hurt?”

“No, just a little groggy.”

He let his hands trail down her arm and stop at the zip tie around her wrists. “Why is she tied up?”

“Unauthorized mutant,” Daisy said. “Be glad it’s only a zip tie.”

“Has she been arrested?”

“Of course not.”

“Then let her go.”

Daisy sighed. “You know I can’t. Your 72 hours are almost up. Either she turns herself in or we take her in.”

“Mutant or not, she still has a Constitutional right to due process.”

“What are you, her lawyer?”

Matt flashed her a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Yes.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: Matt has to decide how to use the rest of his 24 hours.


	10. How it Ends and How it Begins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A battle is lost and a war is begun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content FYI: A few instances of sexytimes here, not quite fade-to-black but not super-explicit either.

PETER

Araceli was neither arrested nor let go. They sat in the church basement, listening to SHIELD raid Elektra’s penthouse on Daisy’s phone. Blood, check. Matt’s fingerprints, check. Sign of a struggle, check. Two microdosers with sedative residue, check and check. Bloody footprints leading to the roof, check. Reports of an unauthorized helicopter in Midtown? Check. Elektra was in the wind. Again.

 Matt’s face was impassive as he listened. Peter would never get used to it, never understand how he could wall up his feelings the way he did. For his part, he was enraged. He couldn’t believe Daisy, of all people, had betrayed him. That she’d just herded them here so they’d be bait for Elektra. He knew she could be cold when she had to—perhaps it was a byproduct of a St. Agnes’ childhood—but never like this. Whatever had happened to her had removed something essential from her soul. He grieved for it.

And then it was over. They could do it quiet or they could do it loud, and Araceli chose quiet. “I’m sorry,” she said to Matt. “I don’t want them to scare the kids.”

“I know, sweetheart,” Matt said. “Because you’re one of the good guys.” He managed to unclench his jaw and uncurl his fists long enough to hug her and kiss her and promise he would do everything he could to secure her release as soon as possible.

“I know,” she said, nodding into his chest. “I trust you.”

Matt gave a sad smile and kissed her on the top of her head one last time. “I won’t let you down, I promise.”

“Time to go,” Daisy said gently, the warmth in her voice a brief reminder of the woman Peter used to know.

“We’ve got your back, Bruiser,” he said hoarsely as Daisy guided her up the stairs. “This isn’t over.”

And then the gate clanked shut and they were alone. Peter turned to Matt and pulled him close. “I’m sorry, Matty.”

“It’s not fair,” Matt murmured into Peter’s neck. “I just let them take her—”

“We had to do it,” Peter said. “It was her choice. We had to respect that.”  

“I know.”

Upstairs, they could hear voices begin to sing. It was 10 a.m. on Sunday morning, and Mass had just begun. But Matt didn’t want to go to church. He just wanted to go home.

The minute they stepped inside their apartment, Matt kicked the door shut behind them and pulled Peter into a deep, passionate kiss. They dropped their coats in the hallway and stumbled toward the bedroom hand-in-hand.

“I need this,” Matt murmured between kisses, pulling Peter’s clothes away as Peter worked on his belt buckle. “I need to taste you.”

Peter sighed as Matt kneeled before him, playing gently with his hair and ears as Matt took him in his mouth.

Then, when he was good and hard and Peter’s knees threatened to buckle, Matt stood and guided him down to the bed, on his side, and spooned up behind him.

Matt fucked him with a hungry urgency that made Peter mindless with bliss. He couldn’t remember the last time Matt had warmed up so fast. They came within seconds of each other and when Matt collapsed against Peter’s back, he kissed Peter’s ear and whispered, “I love you so much.”

“That was—something,” Peter said, rolling over to face him. “Not that I’m complaining.”

Matt didn’t reply, just reached forward and touched his face, tracing its lines. “I’ve had a hell of a day,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“She really did have a cure, you know,” Matt said softly. “One that worked on me.”

“What?”

“It’s a pill that lasts 24 hours. The only way I could have it was if I agreed to come with her.”

Peter closed his eyes and held his breath for a moment. “That must have been a hard decision.”

“No,” Matt said, kissing his forehead. “She was bankrolling Hominus. There was nothing she could give me that would make me go back to her.”

“It probably wasn’t even real,” Peter said, snuggling in close to him.

“No,” Matt said slowly. “It is.”

“Wait, did she—?”

“Yeah. Best I can figure, I have until midnight, give or take. Before it wears off.”

“What?” Peter asked, sitting up. “Oh my God. What are we doing here? We’ve been wasting so much time. What do you want to do? Is there anything you want to—hear or taste or feel or anything?”

Matt laughed and tugged him back down to the pillow. “No,” he said, kissing Peter’s nose. “I’ve already said goodbye to all that. I don’t want to have to do it again. I just want to spend the time I have left here, listening to your heart beat.”

“Are you sure?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

So after a while they got up and showered, trading one change of sweats for another, as though this were just another normal Sunday morning. Peter made one of his famous enormous breakfasts and Matt made a few phone calls to Claire, Foggy, and Karen to tell them what was going on. They ate breakfast and drank coffee and lazed on the sofa, reading and listening to music and simply enjoying each other’s company.

Sometimes Matt would get up and just wander around the apartment, touching things, sometimes holding them to his nose and smelling them. The curtains, for one, and the fruit in the bowl, and Peter’s scarf, hanging on the hook by the door. Once he went to the piano and ran a few scales, a brief half-smile quirking up the corner of his mouth. He played a little Bach—one of the Goldberg Variations, Peter thought—and then a Chopin tune that Peter especially liked.

Peter tried not to marvel at the sight of Matt moving around their apartment as he used to, with a swift assuredness that gave Peter the disorienting sense that he was witnessing the future they could have had if Elektra had never learned Hominus’ name.

He held his breath when Matt finally made his way to the closet that contained the trunk where Daredevil’s armor still lay folded up beneath Jack Murdock’s boxing silks, opened the door, and knelt before the trunk. But he didn’t touch the armor. Instead, he traced the letters embroidered onto Jack’s robe, held it up to his nose and breathed deeply, burying his face into fragile, fraying fabric. It still smelled like him, Matt had told him once, just a little. After Hominus, though, he said it just smelled like dust and cedar.

After a long few minutes, he folded the robe and packed it back into the trunk. Then he stepped over to the alcove where his boxing bags hung, wrapped his hands and took a few swipes at the heavy bag, throwing in a kick or two for good measure. He tried a quick roundhouse combination that he hadn’t been able to do since losing his powers because it made the bag sway too much, and grinned.

“Still got it,” he said, slapping the bag lovingly, and Peter tried not to cry. The next time he saw Elektra, he was going to hurt her. Badly.

But he did not want to waste these precious moments thinking about her now. Or Daisy, whose betrayal cut more deeply than he wanted to admit. Nor did he want to think about Colleen, who was probably being released from SHIELD custody about now, or about Araceli, who was no doubt on her way to a secret SHIELD base to begin her evaluation. Matt was already starting to bounce some ideas about case strategy with Peter—which he rarely understood but loved to listen to anyway—but eventually he fell silent. There simply wasn’t much he could do about it right now.

Peter put on an old movie they both liked and they dozed for a while on the couch. They slept longer than they meant to and woke up starving around four. They ordered from Matt’s favorite Thai place and ate their fill, and then went up to the roof so Matt could listen to the city for a while. He sat atop the picnic table with his hands wrapped around a hot mug of coffee and closed his eyes the way he always did when he was listening intently and a faint smile appeared on his face. Sometimes he’d twitch his head toward something Peter couldn’t hear, or tilt his head to get a better read on something. After a little while he left the mug on the table and went to the retaining wall where he used to perch to keep watch over the city. Peter didn’t like seeing him that close to the edge, but he settled into his old place comfortably, as if it were a favorite chair.

When they got too cold, they went in and climbed under the covers to warm up.

This time they took things much more slowly, touching and tasting each other everywhere, with their hands and their lips and their teeth and their tongues. Peter was determined to shower Matt with every pleasurable sensation he could think of—teasing him with the corner of a silk sheet and blowing gently across just-licked skin and nibbling that extra-sensitive spot on his neck behind his ear, the one that always made his skin break out in a fine sweat when he did. When Peter eventually took Matt into his mouth he smiled as he felt Matt shudder with joy. They fucked each other with their mouths and their hands and their tongues and Matt kept wanting more and more and more and Peter delighted in inventing new ways to give it to him.

Afterward, when they were both beyond spent, they lay in bed, holding each other, their foreheads nearly touching, simply listening to one another breathe.

“Don’t let me fall asleep again till it’s over,” Matt said. “I don’t think I have much time left. I can feel it starting to—well, I don’t know. I can feel something happening.”

“I won’t,” Peter said, glancing at the clock. A cold flush settled over him. It was already half past eleven, and Matt hadn’t been sure what time it was Elektra had dosed him or how quickly it wore off. “Is there anything else you want to do?”

“No,” Matt said, drawing the covers up over them both. “I just want—I want you with me when it happens, you know?”

“Yeah, of course,” Peter said, snuggling in close. “I’ll be right here.”

“I wish it didn’t have to end,” Matt admitted. “I wish it could last forever.”

“I know.”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said, more urgently now, with a soft, sharp inhale that Peter knew meant he was in pain. Peter could feel his muscles tense up. “It was pretty awful before. I’m not sure—it might be bad.”

“I know,” Peter said, kissing his forehead. “I’m here no matter what. That was the deal. For better or worse and all that jazz.”

Matt laughed, but the sound was strangled. “All that jazz? You’re such a dork.”

“That was also part of the deal,” Peter said, holding Matt’s hand to his cheek so Matt could feel him smile. Matt smiled too, but then he shuddered and his smile disappeared.

“Oh shit,” he whispered. He curled into a little ball, his hands and feet twitching uncontrollably. “Oh God, it hurts.”

“I’m here,” Peter said helplessly, unsure whether Matt wanted to be touched or not. He settled for brushing the hair from Matt’s brow, over and over again, until Matt grabbed his hand with shocking strength and pulled it to his chest. “You’re going to be okay,” Peter murmured. “Whatever you need, I’m here.”

Matt pushed him away then, hard, and got up on his hands and knees, still shaking, and tried to get out of bed.

“No, Matt,” Peter said, reaching for his shoulder, but he wasn’t fast enough; Matt was already out of bed and stumbling away, though where he meant to go Peter couldn’t tell. He climbed out after him and caught him as he sank down to the rug.

“It burns,” Matt gasped, groping at Peter for something to hold on to.

“Here,” Peter said, taking his hand. “Squeeze as hard as you need to. You can’t hurt me.”

“I don’t want it to go,” Matt said, panting with pain. He was slick with sweat and pale as death, shivering though he was radiant with fever. He slumped against Peter now, still shaking but the fight burned out of him. “I don’t want it to go. I’m not ready—”

“I know, baby,” Peter said soothingly, kissing his forehead and rocking him gently. Peter could clearly recall every life he’d ever failed to save, and yet not one of those memories made him feel more helpless than he did right now. So he did the only thing he could think to do—he held Matt tighter. “I’m here. I’ve got you. I’m here.”

It took almost an hour, all told. They rode most of it out on the floor together, Matt alternately shivering and pushing him away with fever, vomiting twice into the trash can and once getting up to pace unsteadily for a few laps around the room before sinking back down onto his hands and knees and then curling into a ball with his hands over his ears to stop the ringing. Peter stayed by his side the entire time, touching him when Matt would allow it, simply talking to remind him that he was near when Matt couldn’t bear to feel anything at all, all the while somehow keeping the crazed animal of his panic from clawing through the walls of his own chest.

Eventually, after what felt like a year, Matt’s shaking subsided and his breathing became more regular. “You want to try to get back into bed?” Peter asked, wanting to weep with relief, and he nodded dumbly and allowed Peter to help him up.

Peter tucked him in and brought him a glass of water and an orange, which he peeled and sectioned over a plate he placed on Matt’s lap.

“Here, try to eat something,” Peter said, touching the orange slice to his lips. Matt opened his mouth obediently and ate it, his face crumpling a little at the dullness of the flavor.

“Don’t help me,” Matt said then, something shifting in his face. Peter watched him search out another orange slice and eat it, then another and another. Then he shook his head and pushed the plate away.

“Matt—”

“I’m not hungry,” he said. “Please don’t make me.”

“Okay,” Peter said, taking the plate and finishing the orange. “Is there anything else you want?”

“Sleep, mostly,” Matt said, lying down. “Knowing you’ll be here when I wake. So much work I don’t have time to remember what today felt like.”

Peter lay down next to him and kissed him lightly. “Are you okay?” he asked.

The corners of Matt’s mouth twitched and he exhaled heavily. “No.”

Peter kissed his forehead. “I’m here anyway—you know that, right? I’m here.”

“Yeah,” Matt said, closing his hand around Peter’s and letting his eyes drift shut. “I know.”

* * *

MATT

The first thing he noticed when he awoke was how quiet it was again. Peter was a still, warm presence beside him—still asleep, then. Try as he might, Matt couldn’t hear his heartbeat anymore, and even though he could hear Peter’s soft slow breathing, he couldn’t resist touching him to make sure he was still alive. He mumbled a little and rolled over, but didn’t wake.

He climbed out of bed and made his way toward the bathroom. Before him, the room and the rest of the apartment yawned formlessly before him, somehow both flat and endlessly deep at the same time, like a multisensory funhouse illusion he had to feel his way through. Well, he was good at that now, he supposed. He wasn’t sure what time it was but hadn’t wanted to wake Peter with his clock. His watch was on the bathroom counter and he touched it. It was only seven in the morning.

He probably should have gone back to bed, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. His mind was ping-ponging between Elektra and Maggie—the woman he knew he’d never see again and the one he couldn’t believe had been there all along.

 _Get your shit together, Murdock_ , he heard Jessica say. _She needs you._ He allowed himself one cry—really just one ragged exhale of emotion—and then turned on the shower.

Because Araceli was taken into custody within the 72-hour grace period, Matt and Peter were never investigated and SHIELD never discovered Matt's safe-deposit box. Matt would not be allowed to communicate with Araceli for more than a month, and even then he would not know where she was. That wouldn’t stop him from going to court on her behalf. He lost. He appealed. She would remain in SHIELD’s custody for six long months, forcing her to withdraw from school and lose the job offer she’d already accepted at a major accounting firm in the city. They would win their appeal. 

Araceli would finish her last semester of college and take a new job, this one in San Francisco in the operations department of a major tech firm. The government would appeal the ruling. The case would get kicked back down to district court. Matt and Araceli would win again. So _Jane Doe vs. United States_ continued up through federal court, through appeal after appeal after appeal, every decision inching them closer and closer to a decision that could end the Superhuman Registration Act once and for all.

It wouldn’t invalidate the Sokovia Accords and it wouldn’t overturn the supersoldier ban, but Matt could live with that. The SRA was the foundation—with that gone, the rest would fall in due time.

Two years after Araceli was first arrested, he would take a train down to Washington, D.C., and argue Araceli’s case before the Supreme Court. He would speak without notes, so well did he know the case by then, summoning up appropriate case law to answer the justices’ questions as easily as he might have recounted his breakfast that morning. It would be, he was later told, a virtuoso performance.

But he didn’t know any of that yet. It was Monday morning and Araceli needed his help. Wrongful imprisonment, he decided as he stepped into the shower. That was how he’d get them.

_Time to get to work, Matty._

And he did.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: An epilogue, and the verdict.


	11. Epilogue: June, Two and a Half Years Later

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A verdict, and a new beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick primer on the Supreme Court for non-Americans: The Supreme Court can take months to hand down an opinion about a case--hence the wait described here.

 

MATT

It was a beautiful June morning, already promising to be hot at half past five. Matt had woken up first, as he always did, and after he made coffee he wandered into Fran’s old apartment—which was, thanks to Elektra’s cash, theirs. Peter had not wanted to accept the money at first, but Matt had persuaded them that they had earned it fair and square—and besides, there was no better revenge than using it to make a home together.

They’d already knocked out the wall that divided the apartments, and they’d just finished ripping out the kitchen so the space could become a darkroom. The bedroom and bathroom would remain where they were, though Peter and MJ were going to paint them this weekend. They didn’t know—didn’t want to know—if Gwen was carrying a Jesse or a Jessica, and they’d all agreed that gendered colors were stupid, so: Yellow it was.

Matt went into the baby’s room and placed his hand on the window, feeling the warmth of it. He’d become obsessed with light lately, training himself to remember to turn lights on and off, to close and open curtains, to do a better job of determining which direction the sun was coming from. He was determined not to raise their kid in the dark like a troll.

A soft step and a light knock on the door frame told him that Peter had come in behind him.

“How’s the sun in here this time of day?” he asked.

“It’s fine, Matt,” Peter said. “Once it’s all the way up it’ll get more than ours, actually.”

“Good.”

“Come on,” Peter said, taking his hand. “It’s dusty in here. Let’s go back.”

Their apartment was still littered from the detritus of the baby shower. There weren’t that many children’s books in Braille, but Karen had evidently bought all of them, plus a pile of others for Peter to read. There was a baby carrier from Frank—Lisa and Frankie had loved riding around in theirs, he’d said gruffly, before excusing himself from the party to go shoot beer bottles in an abandoned warehouse for an hour or two. Foggy and Marci had gone the practical route, giving them more bottles and diapers and bibs and spit towels than they ever thought they’d need (they would be proven wrong), while Claire, Colleen, and Misty had loaded them up with toys. Tony had started a college fund—well, he’d simply given the kid a college fund—while the rest of the Avengers had taken care of car seats and high chairs and changing tables. May had blown most of her paycheck on baby clothes, and Maggie, for her part, had gone on a knitting spree, filling an enormous storage crate with blankets, booties, hats, mittens, and sweaters in every size.

The crib stood in their bedroom for now, and sometimes Matt would stand at it, touching the little mobile that was mounted on the headboard or holding the little stuffed monkey that they’d picked out a few weeks before, mostly because Matt thought it felt sufficiently soft.

They’d all agreed that the baby would live exclusively with MJ and Gwen for the first few months, until Gwen went back to work at the bar part-time. Then the baby would come spend Thursdays through Sundays with Matt and Peter, which were MJ and Gwen’s busiest nights. School logistics—was a bridge they’d burn later. For now they just needed to learn how to be parents.

“Ready for the big day?” Peter asked, refilling Matt’s coffee mug and placing a plate in front of him. “Bagel. Cream cheese is at your two and lox is at your ten.”

“I’m just ready to get it over with,” Matt said, sipping the coffee but ignoring the bagel. The Supreme Court was going to recess at the end of the day, and there had been no word on a decision in Araceli’s case yet.

If nothing else came from this case, it revealed how many Hominus sympathizers there were in Congress—and the White House. Winning this case was going to piss off some very powerful people, and the op-eds and talking heads on TV had become so inflammatory that he’d even reluctantly accepted Tony Stark’s offer of a security detail.

But what Matt was most afraid of was losing, and the fact that the court had waited until the last day of session was not a good sign. It meant the court was split, which meant it was likely there was just one justice on the fence, which was not good news for him. “It’s Campbell. I know it is. He’s always had an anti-mutant streak.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know he’s an asshole,” Matt snapped.

“Hey, hangry boy,” Peter said, tapping Matt’s plate. “Eat. Now.”

Matt grumpily pushed his hand away. He fixed his bagel and forced himself to eat, realizing as he did that of course Peter was right, that of course he would feel better with something solid on his stomach, that his anxiety always made him forget what food was. By the time he had finished the bagel, he was ravenous and ready for another.

Forty minutes later, after he was fed and showered, he made his way into the bedroom to discover that Peter had already laid out his suit. He reached up to the hanger and touched the tag.

“The navy pinstripe?” It was the suit he’d worn to argue Araceli’s case before the high court six months ago.

“I’ve got a good feeling about today,” Peter said, coming up behind him and wrapping his arms around Matt’s waist.

“If you jinx this—”

“Superstitions aren’t real, babe,” Peter said lightly, kissing his cheek.

“Says the man who doesn’t change his socks when the Mets are on a hot streak.”

“That’s not superstition, it’s science,” Peter said, going over to the closet. “But if it makes you feel better, how about wearing a different tie this time?”

“Are you really giving me a different tie or are you just going to tell me it’s a different tie?” Matt asked irritably, buttoning his shirt.

“I would never take advantage of you like that,” Peter said with mock offense, knowing full well that in their bottom drawer was a red sweatshirt with ‘I’m not Daredevil’ emblazoned on it from last year’s Christmas party that said different.

Matt huffed and held his hand out for the tie. What would be would be, after all. It was all out of his hands now—he knew that the justices had written the decision long ago, that some had perhaps made up their minds even before he presented his argument. They’d already had months to review Araceli’s case by then, of course—Matt’s real job had been to clarify his argument and persuade the persuadable, and he knew not all of them were. But they’d agreed to hear it in the first place, and he had to take courage from that.

That didn’t stop him from going to 6:30 Mass on his way into work, though, as he had every day since he’d returned from Washington. It wasn’t the same now that Lantom had retired, but he liked Father Robinson well enough—he was Harlem-born and had known Luke Cage when he was a boy, and earlier this year Matt had finally warmed up enough to him to trust him with his secret. He tried to pray for equanimity in the face of the decision rather than a favorable decision itself, but somehow arguments for justice and fairness kept creeping in anyway. Even with God, he thought, he couldn’t stop being a lawyer.

His phone buzzed with a call from an unknown number just as he was leaving church, and even though he knew decisions weren’t announced this early, he nearly dropped his phone in his rush to answer it.

“Matt, it’s Steve Rogers.”

“Steve. Hi. Ah, what can I do for you?” Matt had known Steve for years through Peter, but they weren’t friends, and he wasn’t even sure how Steve had gotten his number. Though he supposed Avengers could get any phone number they wanted.

Steve wasted no time getting to the point. “I spent a lot of time in Germany in 1944, so I know exactly what can happen when the government puts people on lists,” he said. “I just wanted you to know that I’m pulling for you today.”

“Thank you, Steve,” Matt said. “That means a lot to me.”

“For whatever it’s worth, I think you’ve already won,” Steve said. “Last time I was on Capitol Hill, your argument was all anyone could talk about. You’ve really turned public sentiment against the SRA, and it’s an election year. No matter how today goes, I think you’ve written this law’s death warrant.”

He hoped Steve was right. He stood on the sidewalk, turning the phone over and over in his hand, trying to imagine what his father would be thinking of him right now, taking calls from Captain America and waiting to hear the opinion of a case he’d argued before the Supreme Court.

 _New York seems like a place where many impossible things can happen_ , someone once said to him. Indeed. And another one of those impossibilities had just come up behind him and tapped his arm.

“Matthew,” Maggie said. “I would have thought Peter would be with you this morning.”

“He’s picking up Araceli at the airport,” Matt said, turning to face her. “Besides, I’m intolerable right now.”

“Try me,” Maggie said. “Walk you to work?”

“If you dare,” Matt said, taking her arm. “Be sure to wave to the nice man with the gun following me in the SUV first.”

“Oh, Happy and I are old friends by now,” she said. “I always see him waiting for you after church.”

It had been a long couple of years to get to where they were now. After a brief initial burst of curiosity, they’d stagnated into a kind of awkward acquaintanceship, punctuated by small, impersonal birthday cards and occasional stilted phone calls. They’d tried lunch a few times at first, but they had been unbearable—strangely, he’d found it much easier to forgive her for the attempted drowning than for not telling him who she was for all those years. So mostly they’d communicated by email, writing proper, multi-paragraph letters to each other every few weeks. It was a strange way to do it, perhaps, but having that digital wall between them had made it easier to open up to one another.

It was the news of Gwen’s pregnancy that really changed things: The prospect of fatherhood had left Matt unexpectedly desperate to connect with the only parent he had left, while Maggie had found herself unexpectedly desperate to build a better relationship with her grandchild than she’d ever had with her son. Now Matt and Maggie spoke at least once a week, and lately she’d become a frequent visitor to the apartment, helping them manage the tidal wave of baby things that had flooded their home.

He was glad she was beside him now. She distracted him with talk about the baby and regaled him with the latest gossip from the board of directors. “Just you wait, Matthew,” she said. “One of these days I am going to make you give the keynote at our annual fundraiser.”

“Not if I lose today,” he grumbled as Maggie drew him to a stop. They’d reached his office.

“You won’t lose,” she said, with a quick kiss on the cheek—because they’d started doing that recently, too. “I’ve got to get the little ones off to preschool.”

“I’ll call you after,” he said.

“Save some champagne for me.”

He was surprised when he tried to unlock the office to discover he wasn’t the first person there.

“Matt!” Araceli cried, enveloping him in a surprise hug.

“Hey, stranger,” he said. “How’s Frisco?”

“Fabulous,” she said. “I got a promotion—meet the new associate vice president of West Coast operations.”

“Hey, look at you, adulting like a badass,” Matt said. “I’m going to have to get you a fancy briefcase.”

“It’s San Francisco, Matt. I have a backpack,” she said with fond exasperation, taking his arm. “Come on, we’re all in the conference room.”

“All” turned out to be Peter, Colleen, Claire, Karen, Frank, Foggy, Marci, Misty, Gwen, and MJ.

“You all didn’t need to come,” Matt said, flushing deeply. He wasn’t sure wanted an audience for this.

“Don’t be an idiot, Murdock,” Misty said. “Of course we were going to be here.”

“Afraid you’re stuck with us for a while anyway,” Claire said from over by the window, rustling the blinds. “We’ve got news trucks pulling up in every direction.”

Matt touched his watch. There were still more than an hour to go. “I need to take care of a few things in my office for a little while. Make yourselves comfortable,” he said, though he didn’t really. He just wanted to be alone.

He spent the next hour finalizing his press statements. At Karen’s insistence he had one for both contingencies, though he hardly liked thinking about what he would say if they lost. “Better to have something to read so you’re not ad-libbing F-bombs on live TV, Matt,” she’d argued wisely.

“I would not.”

“Well, let’s not test that theory, hm?” she’d said primly. “Remember, it’s our firm too.”

His reverie was interrupted by Araceli slipping into his office and letting out a deep breath.

“Can I hide in here, too?” she asked.

He smiled and waved toward the empty chair in front of his desk. “Have a seat,” he said. “What are you hiding from?”

“Everyone’s stressed out, even though they’re pretending not to be. Their heartbeats are driving me crazy.”

“It can’t be any worse than taking the train in San Francisco.”

Araceli giggled. “Oh God, no. San Francisco is way better. Legal weed, Matt. Makes all the difference in the world.”

Matt laughed.

“But seriously,” Araceli said, leaning forward. “Before today gets too crazy, I just wanted to make sure I paid my bill.”

“What?”

“Hold out your hand,” she said. He leaned forward and she pressed a small coin into his palm. “Back at the hospital, you told me your fee was one cent. That’s a penny. Though I owe you so much more than that.”

He blushed deeply. “Oh, Araceli, no. This has been the privilege of my life,” he said. “Thank you for believing in me. I just hope—”

“Yeah, me too.”

They kept a companionable silence for some time, as Matt read and reread his statements while Araceli listened to something on her phone and paced restlessly around the office.

“Matt?” Colleen called softly, knocking on the door before opening it. “Araceli? It’s about quarter to 10. You want to join us?”

Honestly, he just wanted to crawl under his desk and wait for it all to be over, but he straightened his tie, stood, and held out his hand to Araceli. “Ready to make history?”

“You know it,” she said, taking his hand.

The decision was reported at 10:07 a.m.

Matt had been wrong: Campbell had been the holdout, but not the way he predicted. Instead of the 5-4 decision he’d been expecting, it was 8-1.

“The case before us has asked us to decide whether the compulsory registration of individuals diagnosed with certain mutations with the government under the terms of the Superhuman Registration Act, and its concomitant requirement of said individuals to be removed from their homes in order to undergo mandatory medical testing and training, regardless of whether any crime has been committed, constitutes an unreasonable deprivation of liberty as prohibited by the Fifth Amendment. This Court finds that it does.”

They had won.

* * *

Much later, after the media circus had dissipated and everyone else had gone home, Matt stood at his desk, disassembling a picture frame. It held his law degree; he took it out from under the glass and ran his fingers over the embossed words. He could no longer perceive the letters as clearly he once had, and besides, it was all in Latin, but he didn’t care.

“I did it, Pop,” he said softly, placing his palm flat on the page.

“He’d be proud of you, Murdock,” said a familiar, if surprising, voice behind him.

“Tony.”

“Wanted to congratulate you in person, if you’re not too proud to shake my hand now,” he said.

“No,” Matt said, extending his hand. “Thank you.”

“What you did today opened a Pandora’s box, you know,” Tony said. “And your husband’s going to be one of the ones charged with cleaning up the mess.”

“I know,” Matt said. “But we can’t fix it by forgetting who we are.”

“Agreed,” Tony said. “I can tell that surprises you.”

“It does.”

“We’re not that different, you know,” Tony said. “We both want to make this world a better place. I believe in building systems to safeguard the good. You believe in tearing down systems that keep us from being better. Sometimes you have to fight one to achieve the other. This was one of those times.”

“I’m not sorry, Tony. I know this law was your baby.”

“It was, but you know what? I’m an engineer. When one of my designs fail, I don’t mourn. I build a better one. What you did today was show me the fatal flaw in my machine.”

“And what was that?”

“Pride,” he said. “I couldn’t stop the Chitauri portal from opening over New York and that failure will haunt me for the rest of my life. But I became so obsessed with fixing my mistake—with _being the one_ to fix that mistake—that I never stopped to think I might be undermining the very system I dedicated my life to protect. You taught me that today.”

“Good,” Matt said, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. He could have gloated, perhaps—and he was tempted to—but he knew he’d just spoil the day if he did.

“Give you a ride home?” Tony asked after a long awkward minute.

“No thanks,” Matt said. “I’ll walk.”

It was a hot night, and everyone in Hell’s Kitchen seemed to be sitting on their fire escapes and front stoops, as kids and teenager whizzed up and around the sidewalks on skateboards and bikes. He listened to the snap of double-dutch ropes against the pavement and the beat of a basketball against an alleyway backboard and a remarkably talented girl singing along to Ariana Grande. Someone had cracked a fire hydrant and children were laughing and squealing in delight beneath the spray while their parents and grandparents dragged out lawn chairs to enjoy the mist a little further back. All around him as he walked, conversations swirled around him in English, Spanish, Creole, and Arabic, shot through with strains of hip-hop, salsa, and bubblegum pop, and he smiled because although the languages and the music had changed, this was still at its heart the Hell’s Kitchen he’d always wanted to serve.

Josie’s was already crowded when he arrived—even now he could identify it by its telltale cloud of cigarette smoke out front—but Foggy spotted him immediately and led him to the back table where Karen was already waiting. Peter would join them in a little while, but for now it was just the three of them with three shots of whiskey and a pitcher of beer.

They toasted and drank, and Karen got giggly and Foggy got snuggly and Matt simply felt glad. It had been 20 years since they celebrated the first case they’d won together, and for the first time in a long time, he found himself looking forward to celebrating 20 more.

“To the hero of superheroes everywhere,” Foggy said, clinking his glass against Matt’s.

“So how does it feel, counselor?” Karen asked. “You just won a Supreme Court case. What can possibly top that?”

Matt laughed. “Well, I understand fatherhood tops most things, so there’s that,” he said. “Beyond that? I don’t know.” He drained his glass and held it out toward Foggy for a refill. “Guess I’ll find out.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! There will probably be one more fic in this series. 
> 
> I'm on [Tumblr](https://beaarthurpendragon.tumblr.com/) sometimes.


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